


I Just Can't Be Happy Today

by Teakay



Series: Hope is no more behind a closed door [2]
Category: Dangan Ronpa
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dysfunctional Family, F/M, Minor Character Death, Past Child Abuse, Past Sexual Abuse, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Rape Recovery, Self-Hatred, Suicide, Suicide Attempt, Survivor Guilt, Victim Blaming, past bullying
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-01-03
Updated: 2014-07-25
Packaged: 2018-01-07 07:18:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 5
Words: 25,719
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1117083
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Teakay/pseuds/Teakay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When the final secrets of the School Life of Mutual Killing are revealed to the world, many viewers believe that exactly the wrong people have turned up miraculously alive. Leon agrees, but the only way left is forward.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Machine Gun Etiquette

**Author's Note:**

> So I've stuck Leon in deep. Let's see if I can pull him out in plausible fashion. This may or may not make any sense without reading Carnivorous first. 
> 
> Once again, this is based largely on original game and manga canon, with possible cherrypicking from other sources. And once again, this fic presumes that Junko's description of the outside world is heavily slanted to suit her purposes. 
> 
> There's likely factual fuzziness. Feel free to bring glaring errors to my attention. 
> 
> Further content notes: The past Leon/Sayaka is at the same nebulous level as in Carnivorous. OCs galore. Undue optimism. People feel horrible and beat themselves up a lot. People say horrible things the author does not agree with. Shameless lyrics appropriation.

The doctors who looked him over in the Tokyo Sanctuary Zone said he was an extremely lucky young man. He'd bounced back the very best that could be hoped for from the pummeling he'd gotten a couple months ago. He was lucky not to be stuck in a wheelchair. He was lucky that after taking multiple baseballs to the head his face had healed pretty much back to where it'd been before. He was lucky not to have serious brain damage from the baseballs or the constant throttling with the chain he'd stopped wearing. He was lucky to be alive.

Not long before seeing the doctors, while Leon was settling in the tent they assigned to the boys, it'd occurred to him he didn't have to keep the piercings Junko Enoshima gave him. He burrowed into the threadbare sleeping bag and worked out the nipple and navel rings and tossed them to the tent floor hoping they would be quietly lost. After he took off his shirt at the hospital one of the doctors noticed the places where they'd been. That one at least didn't ask any awkward questions, though maybe that was only because he was a volunteer from Korea and didn't trust his Japanese that far. Either way after he talked about what might be done about the scatter of scars where Leon's skin had been torn open by the studs on his own belt, the scar in his right earlobe where Enoshima tore out one of his earrings, he gave him advice on DIY washes to help the holes heal faster and uninfected. 

They had the water and power up, and stacks of foreign donations. There'd be a whole lot more in Seoul. That was where they were headed, at least at first, once they got around to taking a plane from the patched-up wreck of Narita Airport. Most of the refugees who made it out of the country had landed in Korea. What was left of the imperial family and the National Diet had been flown there, too, and apparently Korean politicians were smug as hell about it. Others went to Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau, Russia, mainland China, the Philippines. As far as America, as far as Europe. 

Togami was going with them for now but making plans for soon after, once the doctors and scientists in Seoul figured out how to do the operation to get everyone else's memories back without giving them concussions. He'd already invited his old classmates to stay at his family digs in France with an air of, how did they say it, _noblesse oblige._ It'd take a while to sort out what was left for him to inherit, but while he was working on that he had his own savings to fall back on. The money he'd had in Japanese banks and stocks and such was a lost cause but he'd kept a good chunk of it in other countries, a lot of them dinky ones like Singapore and Liechtenstein. Leon was surprised at first Togami'd spare a yen (or would it be a penny now, a cent, a won?) for the likes of him – Togami'd stopped being quite such an asshole in the last two years but he'd gone right back again and Leon knew he wouldn't have to be an asshole not to want him around – but the way Togami talked it was like a package deal, he might not give a shit about Leon himself but he was still part of the great big "you." Nobody had exactly turned down his offer yet. Fukawa was definitely up for it, if she could go. Celes was game too; she'd had some stashes of her own offshore, and wanted to see France for real. The rest of them had lost pretty much everything they'd had outside the school, down to their university savings, down to their kindergarten drawings. Oowada would've been most likely to say no – he'd never liked Togami even before what that fucker'd done to Fujisaki's body – but he'd lost most of his fire and had even less of a place than the rest of them to go because they hadn't even found his family. 

That was where their folks were right now, the ones who were still alive, in Seoul – so they were told by the Self-Defense Forces officer who met them in the Zone. Their homes were trashed for Enoshima to get ominous pictures, but the people there mostly escaped – she'd _let_ them escape, like she'd let the rest of her class live for another year, and for reasons that were just about as selfless. There were exceptions: she'd killed Togami's dad straight off, Kirigiri's dad to kick off her televised mindfuck, though given the way Leon and Oowada and Celes had turned up they'd had to have Alter Ego go through the school database with a digital comb before they could be sure the bones Kirigiri found were real. Jin Kirigiri because he was headmaster of Hope's Peak and shut in there with them, and Ryuunosuke Togami because what with how Togami bragged about the pull his family had all over the world, he was by far the most likely to get in her way. Togami's mom was in France when the Incident blew its top, and stayed put, but the rest of them had stayed or been stuck in the waterlocked warzone Japan turned into almost overnight. The ones who might've left didn't, not while their kids were still holed up at the school. A whole bunch of them, ones who already lived in Tokyo and ones who didn't, found each other in the refugee camps nearest to Hope's Peak, as close as they could get considering how often people tried to break in and how much mess usually resulted. Celes's folks she nearly never talked about, the Yasuhiros, stayed in Tochigi, and Hagakure's folks likewise stuck to Tohoku, so they'd been some of the hardest to find.

But they'd _found_ them, and alive, too. The people trying to trace these things lost the trail of Oowada's parents in the early days of the despair outbreak. They knew for sure what happened to Oogami's dad: he'd died protecting the family dojo, keeping it safe for Oogami to come back to (Asahina let out a horrible little cry when she heard this), and took out like forty bear-headed Monominions before he went down. Among the survivors there were shattered limbs, blinded eyes, hideous scars. 

She didn't go after the rest until after each trial, once she'd wrung all the despair she could out of them watching their kids die or look like they had. She'd gone after Leon's parents and Maizono's dad after the first trial, Monominions attacking the camp (the officer managed to get Leon to laugh when he said "Your mother brained one with a skillet. I suppose it runs in the family." "It does," he'd said without effort, light as his laughter knowing she and Dad were alive, not even considering any other meaning there might be to _runs in the family_ , "she used to play tennis."). They'd all three gotten on the next flight the UN people could wrangle; there were more foreigners coming in by the day now that the rest of the world had got their own shit together enough to start poking at the mess overseas, and more efficient ways to send people the other direction. It was easy to guess the pattern so they tracked down the rest and hustled out Fujisaki's dad, Yamada's mom, Kirigiri's grandpa, the Ishimarus, the Yasuhiros, the Hagakures, the Fukawas, the Asahinas, the Naegis. There were still cells of Super High School Level Despair scattered around the world but they were no longer nearly so coordinated as they'd been in the first awful days when it looked like everything would burn. Other countries had things under control by then and the tries the Monominions made in Korea failed miserably. 

Enoshima and Ikusaba's mother and father congregated with the other families, commiserated with them, mourned with them, were evacuated with them. They'd realized early on that the girl saying she was Junko Enoshima was her twin sister in a wig, but they didn't know what to make of it. Another thing they hadn't known what to make of then was that as far as they knew Ikusaba had been killed between Maizono and Leon but the Monominions hadn't paid the least bit of attention to them on their first attack. Their best theory was that they were being spared until they'd seen an equally horrible fate for their other daughter. But where _was_ their other daughter?

Within hours after finding out with the rest of the world, Junichiro Enoshima dangled from a ceiling fan and Shizuka Ikusaba bled out in a bathtub. 

***

The doctors said physical therapy, to get back his old strength and flexibility. Leon hadn't realized how constricted his movements had become since the fake execution, how subdued, until they pointed it out. He'd been laid up for weeks with the broken limbs, chained to a bed, half-starved, and by the time he was on his feet again he'd about forgotten how effortless it was to move just as he liked before, loose and easy; it seemed as distant and impossible as when he flew in his happier dreams. Just the trek from Hope's Peak to the Sanctuary Zone left him exhausted. 

He'd kept his underwear on during the exams. They hadn't thought there might be a reason to take it off and he didn't tell them. He wasn't bleeding anymore. He could sit down and he could take a shit no problem. If Enoshima had the clap or something it'd probably have shown up by now. If he'd picked up diseases from the Monominions that one night he wasn't feeling them yet and there was no chance of him passing them on ( _unless someone else_ – but that highly hypothetical someone would have it coming, right?).

They said there was nothing wrong with his brain but he was pretty sure there were things wrong in his head all the same. 

One step. Another step. A third. Looking too far ahead paralyzed him with the weight of it. He could get up in the morning, he could eat at the right times, he could wash, he could go to bed and stay there all night. He could go to Seoul and see his parents. He could tell them he was sorry. If he was feeling ambitious he could start to think that maybe he could face Sayaka Maizono's father and tell him how sorry he was what happened to her.

How sorry he was he'd killed her. She hadn't stabbed _herself_ in the gut.

He could close his eyes and still hear Enoshima crow _You killed her with your stupid!_ and the worst thing among hundreds of worst things was she hadn't been wrong. 

***

At breakfast on day two Kirigiri reported things were under control and cordoned off at the school. Aside from her father's bones and Enoshima rotting in the lower levels (let her rot), the bodies were planned to be sent along behind them in the near future. The food stores were still good, the edible plants in the greenhouse still flourishing, the generator and plumbing still going strong, and the other refugees would welcome it. There were hopes that with Enoshima dead the Sanctuary Zone could expand to include Hope's Peak as another home base. Everything they'd thought they had to leave behind could be retrieved. Their things could follow them or maybe even come with them – Leon couldn't keep himself from thinking of the electric guitar, the mike that had gathered dust for months. They wouldn't have to go back for their stuff. There were people to take care of all that for them. 

So much for his Plan B of running back in and holing up just like they'd been meant to all along. What would those people make of the room underneath the execution chambers with only one bed and no walls around the bathroom? It looked cushy. It _was_ cushy, the same way as the rest of the school. How about the fancy TV and trappings? How about the bottle of whiskey? The vibrator Enoshima once told him to jerk off with? The footage where he screamed and cried and shoved a dildo up his own ass?

How much did they already know? Did they hear on TV what Genocider Syo yelled about boys fucking? 

Him and Oowada had ended up at the foot of their long table, picking at their trays and not looking at each other. Celes sat near the others to try and prove she didn't give a flying fuck, that she didn't feel anything, that she didn't flail around or try to scream in her sleep. 

He'd been friends with Oowada before. They'd stayed like friends down there, even after he knew what Oowada did to Fujisaki (sometimes he thought he and Oowada were just as bad as one another, comrades in horrible arms, but other times he thought: no, there was no way Fujisaki had tried to so much as scratch Oowada, no way the dumbbell just _slipped_ , and it didn't matter there that they'd forgotten they were friends because you didn't do that to people who weren't friends, either, unless you hated their guts in a way Fujisaki would never have deserved). They'd held on to each other, looked out for each other, because they had no one else left. Now, though, especially after what Enoshima made them do one of the last days locked up, they hardly spoke. Oowada had tried, just before they left. Leon told him to fuck off. And there they stood. Or sat. 

Kirigiri approached. She stopped close enough for him to know she was there, far enough away so he didn't feel crowded (it was a lot easier for him to feel crowded, these days, in the _before_ he'd been the one who crowded other people). She leaned over beside him and said in her these-are-the-facts way, "Our friend knows the importance of privacy," and was gone. 

Kirigiri knew. Of _course_ she did. He wouldn't be surprised if somehow she knew more about it than even him. 

It was nice to know, though, that some of it wouldn't get out, that Alter Ego would keep a secret for his sake. 

***

Most of the showers and sinks running out here sputtered out tepid water. The bars of soap always seemed to be down to slivers and the push-top bottles always seemed near empty. The lines snaked back and forth. Despite valiant efforts everything stank. One thing about Hope's Peak, one thing about that cushy cell, was that their facilities were well-stocked and clean and worked right. He caught himself thinking this and could've kicked himself. 

Everyone _else_ in the Zone was running around pulling their weight, doing everything from rebuilding apartments to tending vegetable patches in the broken streets, but they actively discouraged him. Said things like no, no, he'd done quite enough. _Done quite enough_. They said it to the others who'd come out of Hope's Peak but not so firmly. Celes and Togami and Hagakure seemed to take them at their word. Oowada still had plenty of muscle and there always seemed to be something a guy could do in the way of heavy lifting and so on if he was persistent enough about it. What was left of his gang was sticking with him through everything. Kirigiri stared them down. Naegi and Asahina pushed their way in out of sheer earnestness but they joined forces when it came to him – _it's fine, Kuwata-kun, rest, get back your strength,_ and he didn't know how to tell them he'd had it up to here with resting or that he'd never be strong again. 

He managed to argue himself back to the school with Oowada and the Crazy Diamonds to help move things because it was reasonable to pack his _own_ stuff, wasn't it, even if he didn't have to, and Celes and Hagakure came along for the same reason because Celes didn't trust anyone with her fancy things and Hagakure had "highly sensitive divination equipment" that needed to be persuaded to behave. Once Leon did that they pushed him to the side again, wouldn't let him help carry even the smallest of the sacks of supplies they loaded up in the trucks, he hadn't thought it was possible to get more awkward with Oowada but it was. Things were as quiet with Celes as ever. Hagakure talked loud but seemed almost scared of him; maybe he still thought Leon was a ghost, but Leon didn't think it was something he could brush off so easy as Hagakure being a weirdo. The looks from the regular people who saw the room didn't help, even though he knew they'd be coming. He knew they had to be thinking he was a lucky fucker, having the foresight to kill someone instead of getting killed for real, getting to live in the lap of fucking luxury. Or maybe they were imagining him and Celes and Oowada in bed together. 

They sent him back with the first fleet of trucks. Even counting the hours he didn't actually do anything that took up only half a day. The Zone rationed gas and kerosene but not electricity (the Monominions had deliberately spared that too, to power the TVs, what was the point of a broadcast no one could watch?) so he could play albums in his boombox or games on his handheld but when he tried he felt like an even bigger douchebag. He thought of talking to Alter Ego, part of him liked the idea, but Alter Ego was off getting his electronic brain picked under Kirigiri's supervision. What a waste of everyone's time that'd be, him barging in on things, especially since he didn't even know what to talk _about_. He lay on the sleeping bag, a useless lump, and wondered why he'd used to be so desperate to live. 

***

Near noon of day three the media descended. He was lucky it took that long. What'd he expect? Their job was getting in everywhere. He'd seen people like them on TV before, reporting from places like the place this was now. He saw them with Celes near their tents as he came back from the restroom, shoving cameras and mikes in her face. From what he could hear they were asking about what it was like to murder two people to get out of a place and then find out you'd shut yourself inthat same place for your own good. Do you really feel no remorse at all? Did you really kill those boys for a cosplay vampire castle? Celes didn't sound upset as she answered but that didn't mean an awful lot. 

What he wouldn'tve given for Naegi's hoodie. That might've at least done something about his hair, his earrings. It wouldn'tve done anything, though, for him bolting in a panic, which was what he did next. That made absolutely sure they noticed him. 

He was so busy freaking out that it took a while to hear one of them calling after him – "Excuse me – excuse me – Kuwata-san? This is –" He pushed himself even harder. The established people in the Zone gaped at him, after him, he could feel their eyes on him like he'd felt them those days before. 

He was being ridiculous, of course, goddamn ridiculous. Fleeing from the press was the kind of thing that ended up online set to wacky music. But he kept running and jumping and running some more until his legs were screaming and his lungs were empty and the ache in his side felt like he'd been clobbered by an axe, and he just couldn't go any longer and he hadn't made it nearly as far as he knew he could've, once. 

He stumbled behind a wall of stacked rice sacks and into the smoky underside of yet another tarp on poles. There were people cooking and handing out lunches, and people waiting in line to take them, and they stared like the rest. He hadn't had lunch and didn't want it. Maybe he could get some anyway and pretend to be too busy stuffing his face to – that was the second stupidest plan he'd ever come up with. He slid to the ground with his back to the sacks and put his face in his hands. 

They caught up and found him like that and one of them was just starting in when above him one of the lunch ladies said, cold enough to make him shiver before he understood what she was saying, "I don't think he wants to talk to you."

"We'd just like to get –"

"I don't think he wants to talk to you. Now, would you like to help with something?"

A little ways off someone else said, "Hey, now they know who she is I hear they're gonna get off their asses and take in Genocider Syo! Why don't you check _that_ out, huh?"

He didn't know then if that was true or not, but he knew this other person sounded convincing enough, and his pathetic huddled figure was boring enough, and the lunch lady was intimidating enough, that the reporter and his entourage left in search of bigger prey. "Thanks," he mumbled when he was pretty sure they were gone. 

The lunch lady stuck a plate in front of him and went back to her work before he could tell her he didn't want it. He dutifully cleared it with his head down. If he didn't look up he couldn't see any more staring. If he couldn't see it maybe just maybe it wasn't there.

***

Togami was holding court with some more reporters when Leon slipped back over to the boys' tent. Those noticed him, too, but Togami raised his voice just a fraction and drew their attention back to him. Leon didn't know whether or not Togami meant that as any kind of kindness but he appreciated it either way. 

Inside, he pawed through the clothes he'd brought. Not much luck there; like with his hair and his piercings, he'd always chosen his clothes to draw attention. There wasn't even a single turtleneck to cover the fading bruises. And there was nothing at all he could do about his hair. He thought for a moment about chopping it all off, halfway through that moment shook off his instinctive revulsion at the idea because it wasn't like he didn't deserve it and a whole lot more. But for a long while the go-to picture of him floating around the Internet had been one they took his first time at Summer Koshien, when he was next to bald, so how much good would that do? Dye, maybe, to get it back to unremarkable brown or maybe black, but who the hell'd have dye on hand out here? 

One breath, two breaths, three, four, five. 

***

At dinner with everyone recongregated at the table he found out what the one guy said was true – what was left of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police had gotten themselves together and arrested Fukawa, being sure to confiscate her scissors, because out here that was still what you did with serial killers. The run-of-the-mill one-or-two-people killers they were leaving alone for now. Still, Leon wasn't the only one who was vaguely amazed to hear it. They'd gotten so used to Genocider Syo traipsing all over the place with impunity it'd just settled in as how things worked. 

How things worked now was she was still leaving with them, under guard, whenever the plane could take off. He didn't get all the loopy legalese that'd get her in a Korean jail, he thought there was something about how one of the guys she'd scissored to death was Zainichi and had family over there, but if she was going to break out better that it was in a place with things set up to deal with her than in a refugee hub surrounded by bear-headed anarchy. That was logical enough, but he hoped she wouldn't have to sit near them. Fukawa's second personality only came out after he was "executed" so she hadn't had much time to leer at him and call him things like Red-kun and Rei-chan. She'd done it enough after he got out for him to know he hated it. It made him remember Enoshima saying things like _our dear Sayaka-chan_. 

Togami and Celes were having a tense exchange in French. Oowada had returned from the school today with a black eye and a bloody nose and that was the next item on the agenda, as Naegi and Kirigiri got out of him that while he was unloading someone recognized him even with his hair down and promptly went berserk until the other Diamonds pulled him off. Because what kind of rotten punk who's supposed to be a man goes and kills a little kid like that, huh, he recited word for word. And then – this took even more doing to get out of him – one of the Diamonds, one of the more assholish ones, said something about Fujisaki that Oowada refused to repeat, and that kicked off another brawl which ended in the guy handing over his gang coat acting all wounded and shit, hey boss I thought we were buddies why're you throwing me under the bus over that shrimpy little – Leon wished he'd been wasting his time over there, he could've felt like he was doing something useful or upstanding punching that fucker with whatever force was left in his skinny arm. 

Naegi said, "Oowada-kun..."

Hagakure said, "At least the reporters're all busy now with Fukawa-chi, hey?" He frowned. "Unless they come back and talk to _us_ about it..."

Togami said, "Then talk to them about aliens until they leave."

"There's good news as well," said Kirigiri. "Activity from Super High School Level Despair has plummeted. The SDF believes their numbers are depleted by mass suicide. This means we should be able to leave tomorrow. Be ready."

***

The next morning the reporters waited outside ready to make everyone run the gauntlet to a reinforced highway bus that might've made the trip to Narita hundreds of times before. Their SDF escorts had managed to finagle their way through, and did their best guiding them back. By some unspoken consensus Naegi and Kirigiri went first and took the brunt of the first rush. "Naegi-san, Kirigiri-san, do you have any comment on the arrest of your classmate?"

Kirigiri kept going, never _quite_ hitting anyone with the briefcase that held Alter Ego's laptop, while Naegi did the talking; the pair of them made a vanguard through the crowd. Naegi didn't talk about Fukawa at all, mostly chattered about how glad he'd be to see his parents and his little sister again, how he was sure everyone was glad to reunite with their families, and this got them maybe two-thirds of the way through before some of them got really insistent. 

"If you'd rather not talk about your time with Genocider Syo, do you have anything to say about the other killers in your midst?"

Hagakure shoved his way in at that point, waving his arms, flapping his jacket about. "Okay, okay, let me tell you all about what's in our midst!"

Leon took everything he ever might've said or thought back and back and back. Hagakure was fucking awesome. He knew how to get attention and keep attention and his gesture-laden story about false advertising and aliens abducting his burger got them all the way to the bus. By the time the reporters started trying to get through _him_ Leon had already jumped on and joined the line in the aisle, hurrying past Fukawa sitting handcuffed just behind the driver with five SDF guys taking up the rest of the row. One by one Naegi and Kirigiri and Togami turned aside and took their seats, which left him a clear path to the back. He dropped into a seat just a row ahead of the restrooms (would it be too much to ask for them to still work?), dropped his duffel bag beside him. He watched the others stake out their spots – Asahina, Hagakure. Celes sat just behind Fukawa. Oowada beelined for the back too, until he saw Leon and deliberately sat down a couple rows forward on the other side of the aisle. He could take a hint. 

Some of the original lacy curtains were still on the bus windows. Others had been replaced with large tacked-up rectangles of burlap that did the job as well. Someone had thought ahead and closed them all beforehand, shielding them from the reporters and possibly from Monominions. 

More SDF guys came in. The bus doors closed behind them; they looked around to check that everyone was settled and then settled themselves in empty rows. Seatbelts buckled and they started to move at the speed of rush-hour traffic back when Tokyo had a rush hour. A lot of the roads were damaged and the SDF needed to scout ahead, check for ambushes and mines and that kind of thing. The rest of their stuff from the school was boxed up under their feet in the baggage hold. Last he heard the bodies in the biology lab would go to Narita once they figured out how to keep them frozen the whole trip. Well, things had gone along this far, might as well give their folks the prettiest corpses they could. 

Leon put his seat back and shut his eyes and tried to practice falling out of the world. 

***

The SDF kept provisions in the overhead racks; around noon they brought down bento boxes and handed them out like flight attendants. Leon set his aside next to the duffel for when he felt hungry and picked up about where he left off, which wasn't much. 

It was a little weird when he thought about it. He remembered being so hungry after the fake execution, bedridden at Enoshima's mercy. For a while he'd been doped up and living off the IV, and Enoshima kept him starving for a while after that as what was left of his body kept melting off his bones. He remembered begging her for food and water when he wasn't begging her not to hurt him. That one time when he tried to refuse an order she left him starving and thirsting in the dark until he gave in. He'd cared about food a lot, back then. It wasn't until after she started letting him into the kitchen during Night Time, until he could decide what he wanted to eat and how much, that he started losing his appetite. In the days since they left the school he couldn't remember feeling hungry at all. 

He'd been strong once, hadn't he? Strong in body at least, and back then he could at least pretend that he was strong-willed and strong-minded and all that. He'd been strong, he'd been fast. He had the best pitching arm Koshien ever saw and his legs, too, could run so very quick even if he paid for it later. He had real muscle then, not as obvious as some people but wiry and definitely there. His bones were straight and his neck was straight and his head was high and his eyes were bright and he smiled and smiled and smiled and never cried not once. 

He didn't get sad back then, he got mad. Like when they boxed him in at Summer Koshien and said: we took a vote, Kuwata, and there's no time to do anything about the color but you're not going out there looking like a Yankee delinquent, and shoved the clippers in his hand and wouldn't let him out of the locker room until nearly all of his hair was on the floor or clinging to his jersey. He'd gone in furious, pitched furious, batted furious, because he might look like a dumbass but there was no way he was going to slink off the field like a dumbass with the consolation prize of a handful of dirt. He didn't cry then, not for a second, he needed his eyes. 

He was fifteen then. He'd hated them all since that day and thought they must hate him too, hated them until he was too busy to remember to hate them. Maybe if he saw them again, nearly three years on, he'd think different. But it'd make sense if they'd hated him. Not like he'd ever joined in with the team bonding. The first-year hotshot who thought he was too good for them and too good for rules like the ones about hair dye and uniforms, that was what they must've thought. 

The next March, the last day at that school, two weeks to go before the train to Tokyo and from there Hope's Peak. He'd been getting ready ever since he got the letter. His hair had grown back out and either they'd been satisfied with that one time or the coach had had a word (the coach had a word with him, too, after Koshien, because he _knew_ how Leon was about his hair, but Leon knew better than to whine or snitch – the guys took a vote, he said, like that was that, the cost of living in a democracy). He'd gotten all the piercings he'd planned out so many times (figured the cost for, picked out the top-reviewed studio). He'd ordered the gear he'd bookmarked online, the guitar and the mike and the amps and all that. And he'd turned around in the middle of the front gate and waved at the school at large and yelled something he no longer remembered exactly but still had the gist of – "Fuck all you sonsabitches, fuck you very much," something like that, and he'd run home laughing. 

Those guys were the worst, he'd thought. He'd had no idea what the worst was. 

***

He woke to the explosion and was on the floor of the bus almost before he knew it, even before one of the soldiers began to yell for everyone to get down, ambush. The rattle-tat-tat of machine guns outside and he knew the sound of the bullets hitting something, _someone_. The covered windows meant they couldn't be aimed at inside the bus, but it also meant they had even less idea what was going on. 

"Fukawa!" Togami's voice was tight. " _Don't look_."

Leon looked, clinging to the seat as the bus swung around. Up front, blood had splashed across the windshield along with other things that looked disturbingly solid; as he watched the wipers started to move. Limbs in the aisle – Asahina's sneakered foot, Kirigiri's gloved hand, arms and legs in the worn SDF uniforms. That someone kept yelling: stay down, stay calm. He'd do better yelling it at himself, Leon managed to think. Then something else blowing up behind him brought him back down. 

"Celes-san!" Naegi. "Celes-san, please get down, it's dangerous – !"

Naegi had said they were safe. He hadn't lied. But he hadn't known. 

They'd come to a stop. Pounding echoed from all sides – something, someone, a lot of things, a lot of someones, hitting the outside of the bus again and again and _again and again and –_

***

– _and it jerked him off the ground again and his eyes rolled back further and glimpsed something else – a scoreboard, really, a scoreboard? And his back slammed into something long and narrow and cold and his legs dropped and he fell for only a second before more things, black bands, snapped around him held him with his feet pointing down straining to touch the floor with his arms trapped against his chest his hands still scrabbling at the collar and the spotlights clicking on and the chain-link gates slamming shut in front of him. And he tried to struggle but there was no give in the bands at all and he could barely breathe with the collar pulled tight holding his head back against the post with the rest of him and he stared ahead – had that been there before no he would've smashed into it – and what was it – what was it – oh – oh nononono – and Monobear in a cap with a bat over its shoulder – and everyone on the other side of the fence, staring like they stared when he'd lunged forward against the drag of the collar his hand outstretched into empty air screaming nonono I don't want to die I don't want to die I don't want to die –_

 _– and he would've kept screaming it then: I don't want to die! No! Please! Help me! I'm begging you! except he didn't have the air and the cannon started firing before he did again and again and again so when he got a breath in it went out again screaming without words because his arms and his legs and his ribs and his guts all, all – too much it was too much but again and again and again they kept coming and he couldn't breathe and he realized in flashes of thought in between blows with his eyes screwed shut that not one of them had hit his head, his face, probably planned that way, and for the next too-long seconds he prayed not for his life but for the balls to smash his skull in quick and end it – except in the split second before they did, as he opened his eyes and saw them coming – no no no I take it back I take it all back please please I'm only sixteen I didn't mean to I didn't I don't want to die I don't want to die –_  
  
***

"Don't look." Togami's voice close now, tighter, more tension, most people that much tension would've broken by now with a shout. " _Don't look_."

Even closer to him another high desperate noise from the back of someone else's throat. Leon drew himself further in, knees to his chest, arms over his head, and shook and whimpered and didn't look.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Zainichi" is a term for foreign residents of Japan; by itself, it usually refers to ethnic Koreans with permanent residence who may or may not have citizenship.
> 
> The two major tournaments of Japanese high school baseball take place at Koshien Stadium. Tradition is for the losing team to take some of the soil from the field with them. The whole scene is shamelessly extrapolated from the canon exchange between Naegi and Leon about the picture Naegi found on the Internet in which Leon looks ready to kill something.


	2. Mama, just killed a man

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for the turnout, everyone! I hope I don't disappoint.

Someone touched him, kept touching him, he tried to pull away but there was nowhere to pull away to, they followed him, they grabbed his arms and forced his head up and said things at him but they couldn't make him open his eyes. Then they picked him up and carried him and he didn't struggle, just kept himself tucked small as he could so they wouldn't drop him. 

They set him down finally on metal, with his back to a metal wall. He pressed himself against it. Far away someone moved, someone talked, something slammed, something rumbled. 

***

"Kuwata-kun? Kuwata-kun, can you hear me? We're at Narita. The plane's ready."

He blinked and peered up from under the flimsy shelter of his arms (pinned like they were they'd shielded his ribcage only a little and now they shielded even less). Naegi peered back. He lowered his arms, raised his head, blinked again around the big metal box open on one side. Inside the box were piled more boxes, in a variety of shapes of rectangle and sizes tending to the large, marked with names. One of those names was his. Outside it was evening. Outside people talked, called out. "Where're we now? 'sides Narita."

"It's an armored truck," said Naegi readily. "From a bank, they used it to carry money. They put us in here to go the rest of the way after those... those people attacked the bus. Not as comfy, but... the cargo people will be over soon..."

Someone had been thoughtful enough to leave his duffel next to him. He picked it up and slung the strap on his shoulder. "Okay. Done being crazy."

Naegi frowned. "Oh, and, um, Hagakure-kun ate your bento, sorry about that, but there's a lot more on the plane."

"Okay." He'd completely forgotten about that, that he was supposed to eat it. He didn't miss it. 

There were a bunch of planes on the tarmac but only one that was open with the stairs going up into the cabin and lights inside; as they walked over Hagakure and then Oowada got in, leaving them last. Leon hadn't been to Narita before but he'd been to Kansai International, been on planes, on vacations, visiting relatives in America. This one looked much smaller than the ones he remembered. It was only going to Korea, it wouldn't have to make it across the Pacific. And it had to hold a lot fewer people. 

Holding a lot fewer people meant a lot more room even in such a small plane. The seats were _huge_ , to start, with an incredible amount of space between them. The three new guys keeping an eye on Fukawa looked like they didn't know whether to be comfortable or not. Fukawa just stared down at her cuffed hands or her skirt or the floor. Leon glanced around for an empty seat; Oowada and Celes had already taken two of the four closest to the corners of the cabin. Togami was close to the third, up in front, but he was on his feet and talking to a woman Leon didn't recognize, not looking very happy. The fourth, in the back across from Oowada, was still empty. Leon hurried down the wide aisle. The way things were set up the rows were only one seat on each side of the aisle, six down each side; two by six made twelve. 

He sat down and was about to stuff his duffel under the seat until he saw the electric socket in the armrest. When he looked forward he saw that Kirigiri was already plugging in Alter Ego's laptop, nodding briefly to Naegi as he took the seat across from her. With the seats so far apart he wasn't sure how the tray tables would work until he found the one in his, that flipped out and over from the side. He flipped it back for the moment and unzipped the duffel to dig out his handheld and the headset. 

Togami sat down. The woman stayed standing at the front of the plane, at the head of the aisle, and cleared her throat. She looked part-foreign the same way Togami did, though she was dark-haired where he was blond, and she was dressed the same crisp way, in an expensive-looking suit and shoes. She looked maybe thirty, tops. When she addressed them in a carrying voice she had some kind of accent he couldn't place and her Japanese was just a bit stilted. "I'm pleased to have your acquaintance. My name is Naomi Rothenberg, and I'm Vice President of Marketing for the Rothenberg Group." 

Some confused noises. Celes said, "The German corporation."

"Precisely, Ludenberg-san." Hearing the names so close together, they sounded very similar. Leon squinted. "We've contributed to the support of the Tokyo Sanctuary Zone since its initial establishment. We're pleased to extend what helping hands we can to our brothers and sisters in Japan –"

Togami snorted. 

Rothenberg continued unperturbed. "– and not only am I the copilot on this flight, I'll do everything I can to ensure your continued comfort and wellbeing once you're there." 

"That won't be necessary," said Togami.

In the seat in front of Leon, Hagakure leaned forward; Leon could tell by the shift of his mass of hair. "It's not?" 

"The Togami family is perfectly capable of taking care of its own."

"Come now, the competition is over. You won't die if you accept a helping hand, Byakuya-chan."

They both switched to a different language then. Togami sounded pissed off and Rothenberg sounded smug. Leon couldn't follow it but was pretty sure it was French, "le" this and "a la" that. 

Asahina repeated, "Byakuya... _chan_?" 

"At any rate," Rothenberg turned to them again, speaking Japanese again, with the kind of perky smile that had Leon shrinking back in his seat, "We can offer you a galley up front, restrooms in the back, satellite Internet service, sadly no in-flight shopping –" She got a little laugh from Asahina. "– and sadly no lounge, though all your seats can swivel three hundred and sixty degrees and you may use electronic devices at any time. We'll be in the air for approximately three hours and we sincerely hope you enjoy your flight. Also, as a safety measure, please refrain from opening your window blinds until the plane has left the ground."

***

Once Leon felt the lift he immediately slid up the plastic cover of his window. He'd turned his seat to face it; this way there was no facing anyone else. The sparse lights of Narita dwindled into the scattered lights of Tokyo at large. 

He alternated between staring into the growing dark and the blinking light on the wing of the jet and replaying his new favorite levels of Project: Zombie, the ones where the rhythm wasn't too easy or hard and you didn't see that much of the main character, the rock singer with an undead harem, the one he used to think looked incredibly badass brandishing a microphone and a whip. A little while after the plane evened out, while the game loaded something in silence, he heard a light and familiar voice; he craned his neck around the back of the seat and saw Naegi and Asahina and Hagakure gathered around Kirigiri and Alter Ego. Kirigiri had turned her seat outward so that her back was to the window; the others conversed in low voices while she typed and Alter Ego replied. He thought of getting up and joining them, but his legs didn't move. He turned off the handheld and sat staring back out the window listening to Alter Ego saying things like yes, it's still lovely to see you again, and I'm terribly excited to go out into the world with you, I'm so glad it's not as bad everywhere as we feared it was. It's horrible what happened to the rest of Japan, but at least that was the worst of it, and, oh! This is the Internet? There's so much here! 

At some point Kirigiri said, a little louder than the people around her and therefore audible, "I can answer that."

Asahina next, her voice rising to match Kirigiri's. "Really? What is it? Who is she?"

"I researched this for a previous case. Rothenberg-san is Togami-kun's eldest half-sister."

Leon glanced around the seat back again to see if Togami had anything to add to that. If he'd reacted at all, Leon couldn't see it from here. 

Naegi said, " _Oh_!"

Across from him Oowada said, just barely audible, "That girl? Shit."

"She said Togami-kun's family was destroyed," said Naegi, his voice rising another level, the way it did when he put something together. "And we know that wasn't quite right because we know now Togami-kun's mother is alive. She wasn't technically a Togami, though, she, ah... had her maiden name. And this... he told me – didn't you, Togami-kun? – that all his older brothers and sisters were... they were disowned. They weren't part of the family anymore. So some of _them_ are alive, too."

"Wait," said Oowada, louder. "Wait a second, disowned? _All_ of them?"

Togami deigned to speak, and matched volumes again; it sounded off that way, from Byakuya Togami who tried to play everything cool. "Of course. They were weak and unworthy of the Togami name."

Naegi said, "Togami-kun –"

Celes threw in her two yen from the other front seat. "Despite her weakness, _Mademoiselle_ Rothenberg seems to be doing well for herself. Her mother's family is nothing to scoff at. Also..." Singsong, "she has yet to 'make an ass of herself on live television.' I _did_ translate correctly?"

Togami made a noise like he was about to say something to that but didn't. 

All the while Kirigiri had been typing. "There's a list," said Alter Ego. "Five of Togami-kun's brothers and sisters are confirmed to have survived the aftereffects of the 'Worst, Most Despair-Inducing Incident in the History of Mankind.' Four others are suspected of collaborating with Super High School Level Despair, and their whereabouts are currently –"

Togami interrupted, flat and cool again. "Which ones?"

"Rothenberg-san is alive, of course. The other four known survivors are Katsuya Shimizu, Arisa Lau, Maria Sokolova, and Ryouta Kim. The missing persons under suspicion are Noboru Takahashi –"

"I see."

Hagakure said, "Um, I don't."

***

Leon stared. Kept staring. Behind him Naegi talked to Oowada. Naegi sounded earnest. Oowada sounded terse. Blink. Blink. Blink.

"Kuwata-kun?"

"Huh?"

Naegi leaned in from the side with another tray to put on top of the tray table. Not a crappy disposable sectioned tray either. A can of cola and a cup nearly full of ice cubes (maybe all airlines did that, ice the shit out of the cups to get away with putting in less soda, but that didn't matter in this case because the whole can was right there). A bowl of steaming beef and potato stew and a smaller bowl of rice just as hot. A thick wedge of double-chocolate cake. "I, um, I asked Oowada-kun what he remembered you liked," Naegi whispered. "It's around dinnertime now. I hope you don't mind."

"Oh. Thanks." 

Naegi smiled at him and withdrew. Leon felt a little bit hungry now. He ate. He _did_ like this kind of stew. Before April he hadn't had any meat besides the occasional chicken for months – everything else ran out quick, even the stuff in the freezer, leaving just the little fish flickering in the sealed restroom aquariums they'd half-seriously contemplated prying open. 

(He remembered dinner in the cafeteria the evening they'd chopped up the very last pieces of beef in a stir-fry, how Naegi offered the strips in his share to a disconsolate-looking Asahina, how Ikusaba slipped out her wit in that way she had, like flipping open a pocketknife, and made a crack about herbivore men. Somehow that turned into half of them trying to set it to music while Naegi blushed along with Fujisaki, who'd been roped in beside him owing to being the most herbivorous boy in the building. Maizono and Enoshima belting out in English with their arms around each other's shoulders _Herbivore man, herbivore man, doing the things an herbivore can_ – )

(No. No. Stop it.) 

After that in the few days before Maizono and the trial he remembered eating it in the cafeteria, remembered thinking well at least the slop here's decent. And after _that_ sometimes he'd thrown some together in the kitchen during Night Time. He _did_ like cake, too, sweeter the better, and cola; the cola had a longer shelf life plus they'd rationed it very careful. They might not have actually had much less of it after Enoshima started her thing, but it wasn't as easy to see how much they had (had left). You had to stand there feeding tokens into the prize machine hoping it'd decide to spit out the familiar red-and-white can instead of earmuffs or dolls or some shit. Or after _that_ maybe Enoshima would give you a can as a reward for particular spinelessness – _stop it_. 

Bite after bite. Drink after drink. Eventually he emptied the tray and he got up and went up the aisle to return it to the galley, watching the floor where he'd take his next step. 

***

They parted ways with Fukawa when the plane landed at Incheon. Her guards took her off first. Just before they left she whispered something to Togami and Togami, looking uncomfortable, whispered something back. 

Rothenberg had arranged for a bureaucrat to come take care of their paperwork on the plane and a limousine to drive straight onto the tarmac for the rest of them and take them to the skyscraper hotel where their families were being put up, also by the Rothenbergs. Two exceptions: Fukawa's family who'd moved themselves out around the time they found out about Genocider Syo, and Togami's mom by herself in another five-star place but rest assured she'd be over there this evening to greet them. Before all this, he knew, he would've been excited to hear it – a fancy hotel, an actual _limo_. It arrived just in time, Rothenberg informed them as they lined up in the aisle with their bags, Kirigiri holding Alter Ego packed up again; people keeping an eye out around the airport had caught wind of Fukawa coming through and now they were on the hunt. They should get moving; the rest of their boxes and bags could follow later. 

They all hurried but when he glanced across the stretch he could see camera flashes. He looked away, down, caught between making a run for it and staying in the crowd; in the end he stayed and they all crowded up to the doors and into the limo together. Rothenberg introduced them to the driver, a Westerner, said she was going to stay and distract the press and she didn't have to say she'd distract them with talk about how the Rothenberg Group was so incredibly awesome and incidentally their VP of Marketing wasn't an asshole who fucked around with dead murdered bodies playing serial killer. She waved to them and said one last French thing to Togami and closed the door she was holding. They pulled the other doors closed themselves – slam, slam, slam – and tumbled into the seats. The seats here were smaller and closer together than on the plane. Leon ended up between Asahina and Hagakure. The windows were tinted and came with more curtains. Most of the curtains they pulled down, but not Celes, who held hers aside and looked through the gap with her face so close it nearly pressed into the glass. 

***

There weren't reporters waiting for them in the hotel garage, probably because of the security; fancy place like this was used to handling famous people and all the shit they came with. The driver muttered updates into his headset, went with them into the swanky elevator all gleaming with mirrors and dark wood and brass rails, handed out room keycards, explained things in brief. They had suites on the twenty-fourth through twenty-sixth floors; their closest family members had pretty much taken over there, some of them had a few other relatives scattered on other floors, and leftover suites on twenty-four through twenty-six went to extra security people. If any remnants of the Korean Monominion cells tried anything, they'd do it here. They could call the hotel staff and get pretty much anything delivered, the staff was used to dealing with Japanese people on business so you could always get hold of someone who spoke the language, or English in a pinch, and there was a very nice Japanese restaurant on the second floor, they should deliver upstairs as well... "Miss Rothenberg" would cover everything. 

Togami twitched. Hagakure lit up, saying, "Seriously? Everything?" and Asahina looked sidewise at him and wondered aloud if the Rothenberg Group would soon be ruing this day. Leon almost opened his mouth, almost chimed in – he remembered how Hagakure had this tendency to make a lot and spend it just as fast, on things that "seemed like a good idea at the time," just try and imagine him with someone else's wallet – he caught himself. 

The elevator stopped a few times before they reached the twenty-fourth floor. No more camera flashes though Leon glimpsed one gaping guy around their age hold up his cell phone. The driver stood in front of the doors saying things in different languages like so sorry, we're full up. Which wasn't quite true but his tone brooked no argument. Leon had squeezed into a back corner, wishing he was smaller, but he managed to arrange himself behind Hagakure and his hair so that was all right.

The panel above the door beeped over from 23 to 24. Leon checked his keycard. Room 2605. He put it in his pocket and leaned further back against the rail. The door slid open. 

A second passed before the others began yelling and running forward. As the elevator cleared, several pieces of luggage left behind in the rush, Leon saw the driver standing there holding the "door open" button. In the elevator now there was him and the driver and Celes and Togami who crossed his arms and tapped his foot. Oowada was leaving with his bag but didn't look like he was going _toward_ anyone. He didn't have anyone to go toward, did he? Maybe he would've been better off staying in Tokyo with his gang, the ones who were smart enough not to bash Fujisaki in front of him. 

A specific voice rose through the general noise. "Leon? Leon!"

He looked up. Looked over. "Mom?"

She maneuvered deftly through the abandoned bags and was on him, holding him, boxing him into the corner of the elevator. He went rigid in her arms, frozen or petrified, which was stupid he knew if he couldn't trust Mom who in the world was left – but he still couldn't move. The last time she'd hugged him like this was forever ago and he didn't even remember the specifics because he hadn't thought he had to. He was taller than her by now, her heels didn't quite make up for it, and her hair was in his face and she was crying on his shoulder with her silk scarf brushing his neck – "You're alive, you really are, my little boy, you're real, you're here, you're alive –"

"Mom." He swallowed. His nose stung, his eyes blurred, he was going to cry right there in front of everyone – 

Dad was already crying, though. Dad stood just outside in the same sort of suit and tie, leaning on a cane (what happened that he needed a cane?) and the tears were just pouring and Dad was reaching into the pocket of his suit jacket, or trying to, his hand was shaking and he kept missing. "Megumi," he said at last. "We should..."

"We're coming – we're coming." Mom drew him with her out of the elevator past glimpses of Togami and Celes, drew them all into a hug with Leon's arms limp and his duffel banging around between them. Dad was the same height as Mom, shorter when she wore heels, so of course Leon was taller than him too. It was weird being able to see the top of his graying head. He hadn't been this close to Dad, physically, since more than forever. 

He remembered to say: "I'm sorry. I'm sorry..."

Mom said and kept saying: "You're here and it's all going to be okay, Leon, it's all going to be okay..."

Eventually Dad said something else as he dabbed at his face with the tissues he'd finally fished out, sounding uncomfortable, but even now Leon could tell it wasn't because of _him_ , it never had been, Dad was like a lot of old guys that way. "We'll always love you, Leon, always."

He shut his eyes. So they knew, they knew what he was and they... they still...

But this didn't last because a sneaky voice that sounded a little like Enoshima's whispered: _But they don't know, not really. They know you're a coward and a killer, sure. But they don't know how big a coward. They don't know how many times you got off with her, how many times you ate her out. They don't know what she had done the day Celes tried to poison her. They don't know that you sucked off Oowada. They don't know how many times you told her you loved it. No, they don't know all of what you_ really _are._  
  
***

With Rothenberg money Mom and Dad had gone out and gotten him a sleek latest-model Korean phone with the language and service set up because they knew even if he'd found his old phone (he had but it wasn't with him) the carrier company was long gone. Their new numbers were already programmed in. They hadn't been sure how much luggage he'd have with him so they'd stocked up on shirts and pants and underwear, shoes and socks, some waterproof jackets and coats in the front closet because Dad knew the rainy season was almost on them. "They're a bit plain," said Mom who loved her glitz, her scarf was a night sky of glitter stars. "We didn't know what..."

"No," said Leon, "that's great, thank you."

Had he eaten? He was glad he could say yes, he had something on the plane, he was full, thanks. Mom said he needed to do a lot of eating from now on, she'd make sure of it. Shit, he thought, and right afterward felt a bit more guilt for thinking it. 

There was one bedroom in the suite, did he want to...? He took one look at the huge bed, neatly made, and said no thanks. They said tomorrow they could see about switching, they were pretty sure at least one of the other suites had a bed going unused. He said they didn't have to do that. They called the concierge for a futon, or what they called a futon over here anyhow. They'd have to put it in a corner of the living room but that was fine. Better than being alone again in a bed that size and he couldn't ask to sleep with his parents he was eighteen-fucking-years old. Besides, the futon would be right up near those huge floor-to-ceiling windows. Windows he could actually look through. The novelty hadn't quite worn off yet. 

Mom said, "That broadcast... you didn't see it, did you, what they showed us?"

"I didn't."

"By the time we got to Korea they'd figured out how to air it here. With subtitles, even." He'd never heard such a bitter laugh from her before. "And when nothing much was happening, when things were getting _boring_ , that little monster would show _reruns_. Every single death, every single trial..."

"I'm sorry."

"No," said Dad. " _Don't_ be sorry. There's one good thing about their showing it so many times – by now everyone with sense knows it was an accident. We all know you meant well. The trouble was with..."

_Everyone. Everyone knows._

Mom said, "When Fujisaki-san came to tell us, we couldn't believe it. I was horrible to him. It took a while for him to convince us to go to that channel again. And when we did... we still couldn't believe it, not until we saw you actually walking out of that place. I thought that would be too much trouble to fake. They faked things all the time, didn't they, when it suited them." 

He found the DVD in his duffel. When he held it out to them Dad said, "Isn't that..."

"The first part's my birthday," said Leon though probably they already knew, probably saw that part, watched him freak wondering where Monobear got it. "My sixteenth birthday. I thought maybe if..." Because they'd probably had to leave in a hurry, probably didn't have time to pack all of Mom's home videos. 

"It's sweet of you to think of that," said Mom. "We had some extra copies – your Aunt Yukari." Aunt Yukari was Mom's sister and lived in America, in Los Angeles, and used to always have tickets to Dodger Stadium when they came to visit. So she was okay, and since Mom didn't seem particularly upset talking about it her two sons, Leon's cousins, were probably okay too. "She saved every one I ever emailed, can you imagine? I'm not sure I sent her this one, though, I'll check..."

Someone had drawn and photocopied a helpful map of the three floors to pass out and make things easier if they wanted to go visiting. He looked at it. _Asahina_ across the hall in 2604, 2603 was the security people, 2602 had _Togami_ penciled in, 2601 was _Maizono_. _Shit_. Twenty-fifth floor: _Hagakure, Naegi, Fujisaki, Ishimaru_. Twenty-fourth floor: _Yasuhiro_ (he remembered how Celes had hung back along with him in the elevator, and wondered), _Kirigiri, Yamada,_ and finally _Oowada_ in pencil. 

Dad explained with some reluctance that his leg had been broken during the Incident, broken again by the Monominions trying to kill them and Maizono's dad – "Did you really beat them off with a frying pan?" he couldn't help but ask Mom, who nodded looking grim; it was Dad who smiled just a little as he thought back on that. They didn't want to talk about Maizono's dad, it was clear, and neither did he, though he wondered why they'd ended up on the same floor, couldn't they have switched with someone? And he wondered why Dad was the one with the limp, it wasn't _fair_. 

Dad already had appointments with a physical therapist about his leg so it went right to him answering that yeah, the doctors he saw in Tokyo said he should probably... Right away they called downstairs about it to see about setting it up for him and when Leon said softly um there's another thing – right away they asked to send up sea salt. He needed it for the piercing wash but he didn't elaborate that far. The salt arrived fast. The therapist would have to wait until morning. 

Eventually he excused himself. The bathroom had walls and a door and a lock and a bathtub. Leon double-checked the lock, started the water running, stripped and scrubbed up in the shower, mixed up and used the salt wash, finally dropped in while the tub was still filling for a real bath in a real bath, his first since April. He actually relaxed, a bit. Didn't think about anything. But then the water started to cool and he'd forgotten to bring a change of clothes with him. There were towels of course, and the hotel also had fluffy bathrobes that thinking reasonably were actually thicker than any clothes he might wear in this weather, in summer. But they weren't the same. When he put one of the bathrobes on he couldn't help but think it was so easy to take off. He could almost see Enoshima's fingers with their red nails pulling out the double knot he'd tied in the belt. 

That was another weird thing. He'd taken off his clothes so many times down there in front of other people, in front of the cameras, and now sometimes he wasn't sure whether he'd done it so much he didn't give a shit about it anymore or he'd done it so much he never wanted to do it again. He hadn't used to give a shit; it used to be his body was just _there_ , and his, and who wouldn't want to show it off a little in the locker room? 

He walked behind his parents watching a K-drama in the living room and got his fresh clothes, picking from the new ones, including a plain T-shirt and plain shorts that went down to his knees; together they'd cover the scars from the belt. Back in the bathroom he slipped off the robe and pulled it all on. Used the hairdryer. When he went back into the living room he didn't understand a word of the drama and all the hangdog faces and sad music to match didn't look like it was going anywhere good so he went to one of those big windows and for a while he just looked out at the evening lights of Seoul because this was a thing he could do, now. Far below he could make out the illuminated blue of the hotel's massive swimming pool, Asahina should love that, and tiny figures moving inside it.

By the time his parents turned in for the night his boxes from the plane had been delivered and the futon set up in a corner. He crawled in under the covers. They were a little too heavy for summer, a little too thick and he felt himself sweat but he didn't want to lie on top of them, didn't want to leave himself wide open that way even if he was dressed, even if there was no one here to see but Mom and Dad. When he thought about other times he'd been in bed without covers, before he could get to the memories of sprawling around with a fan and a cold drink and the stereo playing on sweltering summer nights he had to get through all the memories from the months down there, those times when she... when she... when she fucked him. There. She never fucked him under the covers. She wanted a clear picture for the cameras and besides she liked to sit up and ride him. 

Eventually he went to the thermostat and jabbed the temperature down and down and down until the room was cold enough it felt right rolling up in a head-to-toe cocoon. He managed to sleep. He didn't remember much of what he dreamed, which was fine because what he did remember wasn't very good; he remembered dreaming he was a zombie dancing and dancing on feet that were about to fall off. He woke up shivering in the small hours of the morning with the covers kicked off the futon. He pulled them back around himself and lay back again and counted to a hundred eighty-six before he gave up. 

The guitar and other music-related activities were out at this time of night. His new phone, though, had Internet among its bells and whistles. He investigated it lying on his stomach inside the blankets. He checked the site where he remembered having an email account, just for laughs. Of course it wasn't there; it was Japan-based and it would've gone down at the same time as most of the servers in the country. He thought of looking up his own name like he'd used to, see what came up, hope that one damn Koshien picture was showing up lower in the image search, but thought again and decided he didn't want to know. Instead after he found that Google was still up he pecked out _Chihiro Fujisaki_. 

The first thing he saw when the results loaded was a picture of Fujisaki in the Hope's Peak uniform, brown jacket white shirt black ribbon bow at the collar, hands folded, smiling just a little bit, the second a picture of Fujisaki in the old uniform with the green jacket from his last high school, the clothes he'd died in, he thought it was the same picture that stood in the courtroom in black and white with a bloody X over it. The first site on the list was his Wikipedia entry ( _Chihiro Fujisaki (14 March 2004 – 18 May 2022) was a Japanese computer programmer and one of the five teenagers murdered in the Hope's Peak Academy Massacre of 2022 –_ and there was an argument in the editing discussion about whether it qualified as a massacre like the Hope's Peak Academy Massacre of 2021 since it took so long to happen, more arguments about who to include in the count, if Oogami counted since she'd killed herself, if Ikusaba counted since she'd been in on it. And without thinking he scrolled down and right into an earlier argument about if he and Oowada and Celes and even Yamada counted since they'd done some killing of their own and before scrolling back up he glimpsed someone saying hey breaking news they're not actually dead so we can just drop it and someone else saying _but what about that crazy otaku huh_ and he remembered the day of the trial saying to Yamada something like: guys like you, eventually two dimensions just don't do it for you anymore and that's when you go and –). The second site was called Hope's Peak Academy Perfect Edition and came in eight languages and advertised Every Minute From Beginning to End; he hit the back button fast. The third site was Fujisaki's, where he kept his software for download and his blog. After all this time it was still online. He'd had backups, what were they called, mirror sites and shit. He clicked. 

And there – there was Fujisaki's last post, video, uploaded a couple days after his seventeenth birthday, less than a month before the Incident exploded. In the preview screenshot Fujisaki stood looking into the camera and smiling broader than the picture the search engine threw up. Fujisaki tended to look more sure of himself in the videos – he could rehearse and so on, make sure he got it right, even if it was hard sometimes for Fujisaki to be convinced he got anything right. The topic was something innocuous about getting the right computer for what you wanted to do with it. The first kick in the gut was around the beginning of the video when he realized the framed photograph set up behind Fujisaki was one of the class's group pictures. He remembered the picture, could identify each figure at a distance – there was the bulk of Oogami and Yamada in the center, there was him in his favorite white jacket getting chummy with Maizono, there was Maizono next to him flashing a V sign, there was Ishimaru being careful this time not to stick his elbow in front of Enoshima's face. The second kick came at the end when Fujisaki smiled at his audience and said, "By the next time I update I'll probably be started on my last year of high school. Please wish me luck?"

The third kick came when he was stupid enough to check the comments section. The earliest comments were the usual accolades and some belated happy birthdays and offers of marriage for "Chihiro-tan," running the gamut from the sweet to the creepy. He saw a cheerful one from Yamada, see you soon Fujisaki Chihiro-dono. It was the ones in the surge after the night in May Fujisaki died, after his secret was revealed to Japan and then to the world, that got really ugly. There was the occasional comment in another language before but the proportion rose dramatically after that date; the one upside to this for him was that while they were probably saying equally fucked-up things in Korean and Chinese and French and so on, he didn't understand them. He didn't understand a lot of the English either but enough to know that those slangy words he didn't know, at least not in this context, were nothing good. These were the kind of manly-man assholes Fujisaki had been trying to avoid by pretending to be a girl, and of course once they found out they were twice as awful. They knew he wouldn't be able to read those things anymore, but they got off on plastering their nastiness in this place where he'd used to be. 

He stayed just long enough to see that at least a few people were arguing back and calling them on their bullshit about Fujisaki, that the world out there didn't completely suck, and then buried his face in the pillow and burst into tears yet a-fucking-gain thinking of Fujisaki smiling and Fujisaki crying just before he died. When was he going to run out of fucking tears? He was sure not even Fujisaki cried this much and Fujisaki was the one who'd had it really bad, he was the one who actually had to put up with douchebags like that. 

When he finally calmed down he went back to the bathroom to wash his face and clear the last of the snot from his nose. He checked the mirror that held his dull-eyed spindly reflection and all of a sudden hated it so much he imagined dramatically punching it out and sending reflective shards all over the place. He controlled himself. He had _some_ self-control. 

After he left the bathroom he looked at the hotel directory printed in five languages, found what he thought was the right number, dialed. They answered in Japanese, how they knew to do that he didn't know, hello how could they help him. "Hello? Could you get me, um, some hair dye? Yeah. Brown, please, kind of medium dark? And extra towels, gloves, that kind of thing. I know it's the middle of the... oh, thanks. Yeah, room 2605. Thanks."

While he was waiting for that he went over to the minibar and grabbed a bottle of cola and thought while he chugged it that two years ago he would've gone absolutely nuts in a place like this, laid waste to the minibar, called at all hours saying bring this bring that seeing what he could get away with, run up a bill that'd give Dad a heart attack. Dad wouldn't be paying for this, there was an upside after all to losing next to everything. 

He could keep going on like this, step by step. He could do something after all for Mom and Dad, besides be uselessly sorry. He could try not to hurt them any more than he already had. 

A hotel guy had the dye at the door inside of half an hour. He'd brought the towels and things in a plastic bag and a tray of boxes for him to choose from with the brand of the hotel salon on the second floor, offered him the range of shades while trying not to make his stare too obvious. Leon looked them over and picked the one whose picture looked most like the brown he'd been born with. "Thanks," he said like a parrot. 

"Have a pleasant night, Kuwata-san."

So this was what it was like being a celebrity.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Herbivore Man" is, at least in my head, set to "Particle Man" by They Might Be Giants. Apparently they've toured Japan multiple times, so they should have a fanbase there.
> 
> Togami's rough equivalent in the beta was a female student named Rudenberg, which was apparently moved over to Celes. When I was thinking of names for his half-siblings, I gave it another twist. It's also very slightly based on the Rothschild family. 
> 
> And now the series is anchored in time, derived from a throwaway line in Carnivorous about the Tokyo Olympics. Everyone's taste just got a bit more retro.


	3. There is blood in the thread and it rakes at my heart

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Have taken the opportunity to play Trigger Happy Havoc, especially School Mode, and Jossing levels are currently holding steady. Only new snag I can think of is the bit where Leon gets pissed off when Naegi asks if he plays an instrument, but he has the guitar in his room so I've got some flexibility on that. Currently sticking with the Let's Play translation, at least for this ficverse. 
> 
> The kanji used for "Aoi" means "hollyhock."
> 
> Yes, the name ordering/re-ordering is inconsistent between the Japanese and the Korean. I follow in a long tradition. 
> 
> On hometowns: Celes says outright she's from Utsunomiya in a free time event where she's being unusually frank about gyoza, and Hagakure's Tohoku dialect is the only one the Let's Play makes a note of. In Leon's case: according to the Reload artbook, his previous high school was "LL Academy." This seems to be a reference to a real-life school known for its prestigious baseball team, PL Academy (PL Gakuen), located in Osaka; it happens to be the alma mater of the real-life Masumi Kuwata. So there I go.

After he finished dyeing and rinsing Leon curled up on the futon and eventually drifted away, drifted back in at seven in the morning as his parents' alarm started going in the bedroom. He was up and turning the thermostat back where it should be when Mom came out. "Morning, Leon. Oh, it's cold in here..."

"Yeah, sorry. G'morning."

"As long as it works for you," she said, but she looked skeptical, maybe because she saw goosebumps rising on his arms and legs. "Your hair."

"Thought it might be better." He jabbed the temperature up a few more degrees. "Stands out less."

"I guess it does."

By itself maybe it wouldn't do much. But one thing Leon had noticed all the hours he'd wasted in front of a mirror was how you did your hair made a difference in how your face looked under it. If it was brown, if he didn't gel it, if he left it down so that it fell over his forehead and covered the rings in his right ear, if he shaved completely, he definitely looked different from either of the boys in the pictures and the videos and the dresser mirror in that windowless room and maybe that difference would make a difference. He'd been told off before with that old saying, told he was a nail that stuck out, a nail doing its best to pull right out of the wood where infinite wisdom had driven it in. Now was a good time to keep low. 

There was still the labret and the tongue stud. He'd deliberated over those. The dumb reason he eventually had to accept was the only one he had was that he still wanted to look a little like what he'd used to be, what he'd wanted to be, didn't want to be hammered down completely. It was the same reason he hadn't taken out any of his remaining earrings even if sometimes in nightmares he had fits of crazy thinking he felt Enoshima's lips and tongue and teeth ready to bite down on another one and yank. 

"We're planning to go to the café downstairs around seven-thirty. Did you want to...?" The driver last night had told them about the café in the hotel lobby, where anyone could walk in, anyone could see. "We're meeting the Asahina family."

"No, thanks, I'd, um, rather order in if that's okay."

"Of course it's okay. Just be sure and eat, all right?"

When seven-thirty came around Asahina was more persistent. "Kuwata?" she called, catching the closing door and peering in. "Kuwata? You sure you don't want to come with us? What happened to your hair?"

"Dyed it back." He was sprawled on the couch pretending to watch the morning news. The Koreans had plenty of other things to talk about even if he wasn't quite sure what they were, and he hadn't had to change the channel so far. "I'm sure. Thanks. See ya."

"But, um, I don't see why you're in disguise if you're not going out anyway."

"'s not a disguise. 's the hair I was bornwith." It was only a shade or two off from hers for that matter. 

Asahina looked at him a little bit longer before saying, "Okay, but we'll be down there if –"

"Right. Right."

To eat something he raided the minibar for another bottle of cola and a chocolate bar with nuts. Then he imagined Mom's face if all he could show her was an empty bottle and an empty wrapper, so he looked over the room service menu, shut his eyes and jabbed a finger at it, ordered the Traditional Korean Breakfast platter, took it from another trying-not-to-stare hotel guy, and told himself it was here so he should get over himself and eat it already. One bite at a time he managed to clear all the little plates. Then he managed to smile at his parents when they finally got back; they'd done a lot of talking down there after they were done eating. The Asahina family was Asahina's father and mother and sister and brother and brother-in-law. Asahina's sister was some five or six years older than her, he thought he remembered, had another flowery name that started with an Ah, and one weekend the first year at Hope's Peak Asahina and Oogami went to her wedding. Asahina showed around pictures to the other girls and the guy she'd thought was a girl, and he'd been there when Fujisaki had a look. The way Asahina talked about her baby brother, he was ready to grab the Super High School Level Swimmer title the moment she wasn't in high school anymore. 

"Asahina-chan's a nice girl," said Mom. "Do you know her very well?"

"She was in the baseball club," said Leon, and let them take that as a yes. Asahina was all right and he might've been interested in her, well, that way, but she was too _enthusiastic_ for him, or him as he'd been. Six sports clubs. Six! He scrounged for something else to say. "And the tennis club, she tell you about that?"

"Oh yes, she did. I wish you'd introduced us to all your friends sooner." _I wish you'd dared introduce your friends to us, trusted us not to drive them off with the force of our supposed uncoolness, before half of them died._

And out of his very best friends from the last two years, Maizono was dead because Leon killed her. Fujisaki was dead because Oowada killed him. And to top it off Leon had tried to throw Naegi under a bus (and Oowada and Fujisaki and everyone else left, while he was at it). What a lineup. 

***

The appointment with the physical therapist was scheduled at eleven in the morning, right after Dad's at ten-thirty, an outcall in the living room of the suite. The name on the therapist's card in Roman lettering below the lines and circles of Korean was Yi Seung-ji, but his Japanese didn't have an accent. Well, it did, but it was an Osaka accent, the rhythms Leon heard all around for years before he started boarding at Hope's Peak. "Oh yeah," Yi said when Leon ventured to ask, "My folks were lucky, caught a boat west last year, called up some cousins." Zainichi had a leg up getting visas and things in Korea, 'specially if they knew the language, and by now he'd managed to set himself up decent. When he lived in Osaka, he said, his name'd been Katsumi Araki, and Leon could call him that if it was more comfortable. Leon shrugged and said Yi was comfy enough. 

"So you're –" When he started that sentence he definitely wasn't saying what he ended up saying, which was "– Kuwata-san's son. He's talked about you a lot." _And you're a lot more pathetic than I thought you would be._ That was what he was polite enough not to say or show on his face, Leon knew it. 

Mom had gone downstairs to the hotel tennis courts, planning a set or two with Asahina, asking Leon along again. He'd turned her down again which led to loitering awkwardly in the corridor during Dad's half-hour, hiding behind his phone. He didn't see the security people Rothenberg hired but now that he was looking he saw the surveillance cameras tucked up where the ceiling met the wall. He tried not to look. 

The Japanese-language Internet was small and slowly rebuilding. There were online newsletters and things and when it came to news out of the homeland they were still on the front page. In between muddling through articles about Okinawan independence and the logistics of elections for the Diet, he read about the soundbites they'd gotten out of Naegi. Naegi and Kirigiri got the most fuss-in-a-good-way, with Asahina close behind. He stuck to the pieces that covered specific people. Thumbed quick past each mention of his own name, each photo with him in it. 

One photo tripped him. A high surveillance-camera angle. Him and Maizono in the music room on the fourth floor, on the stage, with the grand piano in the background and a couple of mikes standing nearby and his guitar propped against the amplifier. They were holding hands, kind of, her hands were inside his and he was clasping all four hands together and they were both leaning in over them. He thought he remembered that conversation, thought he remembered it was just this year, in February, before Enoshima started her games, one of those times he very nearly kissed her. He scrolled away and couldn't make himself stop thinking about it so he redoubled his efforts to find something else to think about. 

He found a summary of Togami's press conference in the Zone. He'd thought it looked like holding court but the courtiers were mutinous. _Togami-san, how do you think the broadcast of these past months will affect the public image and future of your company? Togami-san, would you like to explain your actions in the case of Chihiro Fujisaki?_ Togami's answers didn't satisfy the reporters, it was obvious from the tone, and they didn't do much for Leon either. Was it _really_ like he'd said to the others, that he'd done it all for the laughs?

An article about Celes. Some more quotes from the Zone and descriptions of how cold and porcelain she acted as she said them, how she still wore fancy dresses and fancy hairdos. _Lack of remorse. Lethal fantasy life._ Quote from Yamada's mom saying she knew Celes dying for real wouldn't bring back her son but if only it could she wouldn't hesitate. Quote from Ishimaru's parents, sounding as stiff as he'd imagined them (and what a shitty thing to think), saying they hoped she wouldn't get away with it, that justice could be had somewhere outside of their broken country. 

Footsteps. His head jerked up. 

A man walking slowly from the other end of the hall, almost to the midpoint with the facing elevators. An older man, in a suit, looked like he might be Dad's brother in spirit, another transplanted salaryman. A man who looked up a split second after he did, and looked back. A man he thought he might've seen all starched and stiff-backed in a family picture long ago, when he didn't have one to offer in return even with all of Mom's camera-craziness because he'd never thought he might want one until it was too late.

 _Shit_!

He looked away, toward where the hallway turned around to the even-numbered rooms on the other side of the elevators. His hand still holding the phone dropped by his side. He heard the man who had to be Maizono's dad walking some more, heard the elevator door _ding_ open, waited for the sound of it closing before he looked back. 

Maizono's dad stepped away from the elevator he hadn't gotten into, stepped toward him. He hadn't taken _his_ eyes away. His face was a lot easier to read than Yi the therapist's; his disgust was out in the open. 

Leon clutched the phone and stared back, a trapped animal. In his mouth his tongue was frozen and he knew if he tried to speak it'd be clumsy and stumbling as when he tried to tell the others it was self-defense, which wasn't true but sounded more justified and so much less stupid than the truth. 

He tried anyway as the man moved closer. "I'm... I'm sorry..."

"You should be." 

He wasn't trapped and he wanted to prove it, wanted to run as fast as he could run now. His free hand went behind him to the doorknob of Room 2605 but he stopped it there. No. He had to take it like a man. Even as he thought that he heard himself whining, "I didn't mean to –"

"You did." 

Other stupid things he could've said: _It was an accident. She started it. I didn't want to leave her like that. If I'd remembered I never would've... If I'd known what would happen I never would've..._ He didn't say anything. Far away again an elevator went _ding._

"To think I ever... I can't believe... for a lazy, stupid boy who's never worked a day in his life except to hide his crimes..." 

He thought wildly that he'd heard that was Maizono's dad's problem, working every day in his life. His own dad was always super-busy but when Leon thought back he remembered he'd always made an effort to make up for it, even if Leon hadn't appreciated those efforts ( _You're growing, you'll need to know how to tie a tie. Let me show you. You like Western music, don't you? Aunt Yukari sent some of her boys' favorites, why don't you see if –_ ). And Mom was there when he couldn't be. The way Maizono talked about life at home, when she'd talked about it, it hadn't sounded like her dad did the same and if he hadn't she hadn't had a mom or nice grandparents or anyone to take up the slack. But what right did he have to say anything? Her dad might've worked overtime a lot but that wasn't close to sticking a knife in her. 

"And to think it was you – it was _you_ –"

"Excuse me?"

Naegi rushed over from the elevators, looking alarmed. Had something happened? Mom and Asahina at the tennis court – Alter Ego's laptop – his mind had reeled through endless fragments of possibilities by the time Naegi stopped to the side of them, very nearly between them. "Excuse me, sir? Are you, um, Maizono-san's father? I'm Makoto Naegi, I don't think we've met, unless it was one of the things I've forgotten, and I just wanted to say I'm sorry about... about..."

Oh, Leon thought as Maizono's dad turned toward Naegi, away from him, _they_ were the ones being alarming. 

"No, we haven't met," Maizono's dad said at last, "but it's a pleasure, Naegi-kun." He put out a hand. After a second Naegi put out his. They shook. "There's no need to be sorry. Actually, I'd like to thank you and, ah, Kirigiri-san for all you've done, getting justice for my daughter..."

Naegi made various demurring noises and soon segued into, "Actually, I wanted to talk to Kuwata-kun about something, do you have a moment, Kuwata-kun?" 

"I." He swallowed. It was uncomfortable looking at Naegi but it would be even more uncomfortable looking anywhere else. "I, I've got to see someone at eleven, um, in here, there's an appointment so. Um."

"Okay," said Naegi. "Only, Alter Ego's been asking after you, so when you have time –"

Behind him the door opened. Yi had assessed the situation by the time Leon made himself turn around. "Kuwata-kun?" he said fast. "I'm ready to see you, if you'll just, ah, come this way –"

"Maizono-san," said Dad as Leon passed him in the foyer, the coldest Leon had ever heard him, and it was really strange, wasn't it, how you could call two different people the exact same thing.

( _Maizono-san?_ he called past the door he'd tried and cracked open, all formal with nerves. A girl's room past midnight. Somewhere he'd never been though he did his best to act like he had because he figured that'd make it easier to actually get there. In the near-dark in uncharted territory it was harder to act easy about things like he had that first day, to just go ahead and volunteer them both to lug Naegi's knocked-out ass to the dorms with a flip _I'll carry him with Maizono-chan!_ He couldn't get his smile to go on right but he told himself maybe she'd like that, a little bit of awkwardness, not _too_ smooth–)

Somewhere back near his usual voice which you couldn't call warm exactly but wasn't cold, Dad said, "And you must be – "

In the living room proper, Yi looked back at Dad still in the foyer, talking to Naegi on the threshold. "Should we wait?" Until they were actually gone, Leon thought he meant. They stood there and time passed but the voices kept going and the door didn't close and Leon wished he was brave enough or not wimpy enough to go back and ask to be alone, or even ask Yi to ask for him. 

A while after wishing he started to move his feet. He had them back in sight and was just about decided on asking, even though he still wasn't sure when he could actually make himself open his mouth, when Naegi said a little bit too loud "So when it comes down to it, it was Junko Enoshima and Super High School Level Despair who was responsible for it all."

"I see your point, but it wasn't that lunatic girl who put a knife in my daughter –"

"But wasn't it a lunatic girl who lured my son to that room?" Dad's voice had frozen over again. "Who attacked him with that knife, _twice_? Or was she a lunatic? She certainly seemed to know what she was doing when she planned it. And you blame _Leon_ that your precious daughter reaped what she sowed, the conniving –"

"Dad! Stop it!"

Everyone stopped it so they could stare at him, and he wished he hadn't said anything but he couldn't have let it go by. After what he'd done to her – he just couldn't. "Please don't," he managed to squeeze out of his throat, "Don't talk about Sayaka like that. Please." 

"And you think _you_ have the right to talk about her that way?" said Maizono's dad, and then Leon realized what he'd said, how he'd said it, how familiarly. Sayaka.That was what he'd started calling her in their year inside, that secret year, the year the world didn't see – that was what they thought, anyhow, but that picture – but even if the whole world saw it didn't matter anymore what stupid things the idol factory had her sign because it was gone with everything else (and he remembered how the year before that, when she patiently explained what was what, impressing on him the stakes involved, he'd shuddered at the mental image of them making her hack away her hair). 

(He thought now, and felt even sicker thinking it, if the thing Enoshima said would've been her secret was true the fucking perverts at that company probably wanted her to themselves.)

He got more words up and out like puking glass. "N... no, I don't, I..."

"We can discuss this later," said Dad, like someone else would say _I will stab you in the face later you fucker_. Leon cringed at the tone before he realized it wasn't for him. 

They all left after that. Dad said something about checking on Mom, Naegi said something about checking on Oowada and Celes, Sayaka's dad didn't say another word. 

***

After that the examination was a hell of a lot more awkward than the awkward it would've been anyway. He should've expected Yi to ask him to take off his shirt, so he could get a good look at what he was working with, but when Leon did take it off he got the shakes and crumpled the shirt in his hands the whole time while Yi checked out his posture. At first Yi tried waiting for him to calm down which just made him shake worse. He kept saying I'm going to do this and that, would you do this and that, is that okay? Leon just shut his eyes and kept nodding and kept thinking: he'd used to imagine he loved her. 

Yi asked questions. The doctors in the Sanctuary Zone hadn't asked much maybe because the answers were obvious, maybe because they were all caught up on their TV. Actually he mostly asked half-questions, he had this habit of letting them trail off for Leon to fill in the other half, and with Yi's gaps there for them to fill the words just slid out of him and there was no chasing them down: Yeah, he hadn't been eating that much. Yeah, he'd been tied up for a long time. Yeah, she used to hit him with a belt. Yeah, she liked to choke him. "I had this lock on a chain, wore it on my neck, I mean it was mine, she didn't put it there. She'd... twist it..."

"I see." Maybe he'd seen him wearing it, those first few days.

Yi talking got things along a bit easier, he thought. When he was listening to Yi and listening to his own words sliding out of him he wasn't thinking so much about the pressure and movement and probing of Yi's hands and his body forgot to flinch or cringe beneath them. Eventually when he flinched anyway and felt the blood go to his face Yi's voice got quieter, embarrassed almost (why should _he_ be embarrassed?), as he said he'd treated other people who'd been – dot dot dot – tortured, it was okay to be uncomfortable getting touched, took the brain a while to catch up, that was normal. _Something_ was normal. 

His pelvic bones and all the innards and joints and things were in good shape, and the X-rays from the Zone said the same thing, and he said the same thing (maybe Enoshima had wanted it that way, wanted him to have a working dick for her to fuck), so Yi didn't ask him to take off his underwear. No worries words would slip out about _that_. 

When they were done he started to say something else Leon knew was something like how he was so very very lucky, but he didn't finish it, or leave it to be finished. Instead he showed him exercises to do, stretches and so on, and told him to keep to a healthy diet and gain weight and work out and after a while of that he should improve and eventually be all the way okay physically speaking and Yi would check back in after a week at most, sooner if necessary. And then after he'd handed out copies of general instructions and written down some personalized ones he said, in that quiet embarrassed way again, that there were places now that were used to looking after Japanese refugees, helping them settle and so on, and here's a list. Leon took this sheet of paper with the rest of the diagrams and things because it was less trouble than giving it back, and after Yi left it seemed like less trouble to leave it where it was. Maybe if he got into a fight with Naomi Rothenberg or something, needed a place to crash fast. Sounded crazy, but for more than a year he'd been dealing (or not) with crazy impossible things. 

***

Some ten minutes after Yi left, Dad came back with Mom. "We all said terrible things at first," Mom said, "but then there was the attack."

"Your mother saved his life," said Dad. "One of them was about to split his skull with a hatchet."

"For a few weeks after that," said Mom, "in Seoul, we and Enoshima-san and Ikusaba-san were the only ones who were... well... _grieving_ in quite the same way. Kirigiri-san lost _his_ son, of course, before any of that, but he'd said goodbye to him long ago, and Kirigiri-sensei was a grown man, after all..." 

Leon couldn't remember Enoshima ever actually telling him that she killed the headmaster but somehow, he thought now, ever since he started to remember again he'd always kind of known underneath. The first time Leon remembered thinking outright _he's dead_ it was the time Enoshima showed up at the bedside with a bottle of booze saying _look what Kirigiri-sensei had stashed in his office_ , but even then the thought hadn't shocked him. He'd never expected to see him again, hadn't even hoped for it. Maybe in a weird way he'd had the trust of a little kid lingering in his subconscious: Jin Kirigiri promised to keep them safe and nothing short of death could've stopped him. 

"We used to visit one another. When we moved in here we asked for rooms on the same floor. We'd reminisce, and so on. Our children were dead and we all came to understand who was really responsible. At least, I _thought_ he understood."

 _Oh_. "I wasn't dead."

Mom hugged him again with ferocity. He didn't know how to tell her that her grip felt too tight. "And we're glad you're not. As if since a miracle didn't happen for his own daughter it shouldn't ever happen for anyone else."

"But it shouldn'tve happened," he choked out staring over her shoulder at the window. "It's not fair."

It wasn't, not the least bit. Why him and not Sayaka. Why Oowada and not Fujisaki. Why Celes and not Ishimaru or Yamada. 

"It's not your fault it's not fair," said Mom. "Someday he'll get it through his skull. And if he doesn't it doesn't matter what _he_ thinks."

***

At least with all the commotion nobody said anything about him not having lunch. He wasn't hungry. It'd been a big breakfast.

Kirigiri wasn't in but her grandpa was. When he answered the door Leon almost turned on his heel and fled under the searching gaze that ran in the family (he'd seen a look like that in the headmaster's eyes, sometimes) but he said "It's about Alter Ego" and the old man nodded and showed him in straight away. 

"Good morning, Kuwata-kun!"

"Morning," he said and typed as he got comfortable at the desk. 

"I'm glad to see you again. Are you all right?"

_I'm fine. Why wouldn't I be?_

"Ah, I've thought of possible reasons."

Leon took a second before putting his fingers back to the keyboard. _How's the Internet?_  
  
"There's so many things here. Kirigiri-san advised me to consider them critically, but if only a fractional percentage of the data is true it's still so much! And I understand there was even more available before the 'Despair-Inducing Incident.' I'm downloading more languages to my database. It'll take some time to parse them all. Don't you know some English, Kuwata-kun?"

_I know a bit._

"Would you mind if I asked you to give feedback on my usage? The pronunciation is much less consistent, and with my voice recognition protocols currently incomplete..."

_Currently?_

"My master's first major project was such a system." He thought he remembered Fujisaki saying something about that, about him tweaking one of his dad's programs into sudden amazingness. "It was never widely distributed because of expense, but I understand the functionality was good. I believe that with time I can reproduce it from the existing data, but more input would help very much."

 _I'll probably be bad at it, but I can try._  
  
"Heh heh, thank you!"

He felt himself start to smile. On the screen, Alter Ego's smile widened in return. 

***

 _You don't actually say the G_ , he was doing his best to explain a half hour later. _It's just kind of there not making sense_. 

"Ah, I see. ' _Right_.' Is that right?"

 _Right!_  
  
The hotel rooms weren't as meticulously soundproof as the dorm rooms at Hope's Peak, so he heard some hint of the pandemonium in the hall and the smile that'd made itself at home on his face slipped off before Naegi rang the doorbell. "Kirigiri-san? Kirigiri-san!"

"She's looking into some things at the University Hospital," said Kirigiri's grandpa, very calm. "Do you need her right away?"

"The _hospital_?" Naegi's voice swayed on the border between hysterical laughter and hysterical tears. "No... I guess not, but she should know, something's happened..."

"What?" said Leon, making for the foyer before he could think not to. "What happened?"

"Kuwata-kun?" Naegi looked like he'd fallen into a pool. His clothes were soaked through and the sleeves of his hoodie were rolled up to his elbows. Leon stared at them, trying to piece things together in the dark. "Yes... you should know too, it's Celes-san... she... she's tried to kill herself."


	4. The Kids Aren't Alright

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In Japan, it's currently required for married couples to have the same last name (the name-changer's usually the woman, but occasionally it's the man). In the game, Junko refuses to explain why her last name's different from Mukuro's.

Naegi got his number and promised to call with updates. He had to explain what just happened to Alter Ego, and that was it for English lessons because Alter Ego was tearing up and saying he didn't understand, he didn't understand at all, and Leon felt like he'd gone halfway out of himself, floating over his own head like a tethered balloon. He went back upstairs. He was glad he didn't have to go up actual stairs, just walk in and out of the elevator, because at that distance from himself his feet were slow and clumsy and he didn't know if he could manage any more than forward and left and right. 

Back in the suite he did some unpacking. Set up the guitar and the mike and so on. Opened notebooks and looked over his old drivel. One of his few realistic assessments way back when had been knowing he'd have to get someone else to write the songs. While he did all this he sank slowly back down and in. 

Later that afternoon, when he was pretty much back into himself, the doorbell rang and he looked through the peephole before he opened up and signed for a fat envelope with visa paperwork. He'd found his last passport stuffed inside the cover of a notebook dating from around the time of the Incident and it still had another two years left in it. If he was someone else he'd have worried that some official guy at some border would look between him and the smiling picture and say, like _hell_ that's you. If he was someone else...

***

Dad had been in Seoul loads of times before, on business. One of his favorite restaurants from those days was still around and did delivery, so dinner was cartons of takeout with snap-apart chopsticks in front of the TV. Mom channel-surfed. It was baseball season in Korea too, he should've remembered that, chances were it'd land on a game, and when it did he didn't have a split second to be unreasonably surprised before they were both giving him worried looks. Mom switched the channel to the evening news. 

"No, wait –" They looked at him again. He swallowed. "Could you go back?"

"Of course," said Mom, and surfed backward. 

He didn't understand what they were saying here, either, but it was a lot easier to guess and the movements were pretty much the same. They all watched that while they ate barbecue and rice and scallion pancakes until in the sixth inning or so Leon's hands started to shake and his eyes started to blur and Dad took the remote and flipped to another K-drama. 

***

He'd been nervous about going to the hospital when Naegi brought it up but when they got to it, after word came from Kirigiri that Celes was awake, it was quick and simple as peeling off a stick-on bandage. The hardest part was explaining to Mom and Dad where he was going, and who he was going for – it was up to Naegi, again, to say it was for Celes, which they didn't take as badly as he'd momentarily feared they would. They took the elevator down, met the driver from yesterday in the garage, piled into another car with tinted windows, and off they went. Him and Naegi and Oowada and an old lady who turned out to be Celes's grandmother, the one whose recipe they followed once, him and Celes and Oowada rolling out the thin little circles of dough in the kitchen one night, spooning in the filling, fold and pinch. A smear of flour on Celes's face, more white over the makeup she put on so careful every morning, and put back on after Enoshima was done with her. 

He found that out for sure as they waited in traffic; it was so slow he started feeling nervous all over again. A little after the sky opened up for a gush of summer rain and the windshield wipers started going at top speed, he blurted out something along the lines of hey were you the one with the gyoza recipe? and could've sunk right through the floor of the car, right through the road below. 

But the old lady nodded. "At least my girl remembers that."

Celes still had a mother and a father and another grandmother staying in 2401, some aunts and uncles and cousins in somewhat less fancy rooms on lower floors. None of them came. Made too much sense, considering Celes hadn't wanted to admit they existed; maybe they didn't want to admit _she_ existed after she killed Ishimaru and Yamada on live television and gave everyone such a lame reason for doing it. 

***

What he could gather: last night, after he left with Mom and Dad, Celes finally got off the elevator on the twenty-fourth floor. She tossed the room key they'd given her and moved in with Oowada in that way she had, like she never once imagined she might be turned down or turned out. Oowada didn't turn her down; there were two beds in his suite ("Don't ask me why") and he got the front desk to cut another keycard for her. Then this afternoon she'd shut herself in the bathroom with an antique straight razor she ordered in by phone and lay in the bathtub in her fanciest dress while the water ran.

What happened next was even more confused. Hotel security was involved – something like someone on the staff mentioned delivering the razor and someone else asked why the hell's the crazy Japanese chick from TV want a razor, hey wait you think she's gonna kill someone else oh fuck oh fuck stop her before she kills someone else, and the upshot was with Oowada's help they broke down the door. Naegi slipped and fell into the tub during the pandemonium, hence the soaked clothes. She'd lost enough blood to pass out but that meant she didn't try to stop them from saving her.

***

The hospital was called the National University Hospital. It was past eight-thirty at night now, but still visiting hours. Kirigiri joined them after winding up her talk with some researchers from the university part of the hospital about the data Alter Ego had on their memories. Naegi explained to him and Oowada that she'd brought over a copy of the files that had to do with it on a flash drive. Leon wondered if there was a bit of Alter Ego in the drive, too, and bits of him on the university computers. He wondered how Kirigiri figured out which files had to do with it. 

" _This_ is quite a turnout," said Celes in a voice that was too small to be as sarcastic as she aimed for. 

Granny Yasuhiro crossed her arms. "You think I wouldn't come see my favorite granddaughter?"

Celes's smile looked slightly more real. She said, the words worn soft-edged with some old habit, "I'm your only granddaughter."

"My favorite grand _child_."

Celes's left arm was bandaged from elbow to wrist. Leon couldn't stop his mind from spinning like the slot machines at the trials and it settled on the irrelevant fact that this was how Enoshima and Ikusaba's mother offed herself, wasn't it? Cut her arm open and watched the blood go down the drain. Whose idea was it to name a kid Corpse, anyhow? He shook himself. 

"Celes-san," said Naegi. He was clutching an armful of the books from her baggage, ones he'd thought she might like to read while she got better. "Celes-san... I don't understand..."

"Of course you don't, Naegi-kun," said Celes. She lifted her head a very little bit before putting it back on the pillow. "Have you ever felt a moment's spite in your life?" 

"Spite...?"

"I have," said Kirigiri. When Leon glanced over she had one of her considering looks. 

Celes looked them all over again. "I'm not _your_ granddaughter, I hope?"

Leon moved his shoulders up and down, put some breeze in his voice. "Seemed like the thing to do."

"I was gonna say!" Oowada very nearly shouted; a passing doctor flinched. "The fuck's going on in your head? You go and do this _after_ we got out of there?"

"But exactly!" Celes smiled so sweet, like a painted doll. 

( _I'm not a doll_ , said Sayaka in the entrance hall, with one of those smiles that could've had anything behind it, _I'm very much alive!_ She wasn't anymore)

"Oowada-kun, Kuwata-kun, surely _you_ know how she set the stage. Sharp objects, morphine, silverware to jam in the power outlet. I was never going to die _there_. I'd never give her the satisfaction. Ah, and now I've ruined my favorite dress for nothing."

***

One of the doctors Kirigiri had been talking to wanted to scan all their brains to help figure the best way to get the missing memories back for everyone else. Leon fumbled for way too long taking out the labret and the stud and the earrings so they wouldn't get fucked up by all the magnets in the scanning machine. Nobody was exasperated with him out loud. He fumbled even worse putting them back in but at least that wasn't holding anyone up. He wondered how much worse the looks would be once they remembered. When he'd have to take a good look at how much was smashed to bits between them. 

While they were going about that, taking their turns, some more people took their chance to gawk. Staff, visitors for other patients, a constant trickle through the halls and glancing in through the doorway. Some tried to look casual and some didn't bother. He tried not to look at them looking at him but sometimes he heard their footsteps, heard how they paused and then started walking again, and other times he saw how Kirigiri's eyes moved, gave each passerby a once-over. Once she seemed to lock onto something and he turned around to see what she saw, which was a guy maybe their age, tall but slight, wearing glasses, melting away almost before Leon got a look at him. When he looked back to Kirigiri she had her head tilted forward just a bit, like she was acknowledging that vanishing guy, and he didn't know where to start figuring that out. 

On the ride back to the hotel Granny Yasuhiro, who'd been having a long private talk while all the brain stuff was going on, conspicuously buried herself in a tattered paperback. Naegi said it was definitely great having so many people to talk to again, but he thought it would also be nice for everyone to keep getting together sometimes, how does another breakfast meeting sound? Eight in the morning, maybe, would that be all right with you, Kuwata-kun, or should it be later...? Even when Naegi brought up the café in the lobby – have you tried it yet? It's really good – somehow Leon didn't say no. Oowada mumbled something. It wasn't a no either. 

***

When he got back to the suite Dad was alone on the couch in the half-dark staring at a sleeping laptop (not Alter Ego, wrong size, wrong color) and a couple of empty little minibar bottles on the coffee table in front of him. He had a third bottle in his hand. "Here," he said when Leon got close, and held it out to him. Leon tossed it back to scorch its way down his throat and put it in line. For a while they sat wordlessly on opposite ends of the couch staring at the turned-off TV. Then Leon started doing leg stretches. A little after that Dad said, "I'm sorry. I should have remembered she was your friend." 

"Not like I talked about her." 

"Yes, I don't suppose you did... but... the broadcast, sometimes, showed other footage, earlier footage..."

He remembered that picture on the Internet, him and Sayaka in the music room. He remembered Enoshima saying she wished they'd fucked so she could cut it in for dramatic irony. So she'd settled for what she could. "Oh. What... what else...?"

"Not much else," said Dad. "Not about you, because it... it happened very early on. Recordings from Koshien. Nothing else so... so... private... I know I shouldn't have, but I thought...I thought, then, that was all that was left."

"No, it's fine. Anyhow I probably should've said." Leon couldn't remember the last time before the Incident he'd confided in Mom, let alone Dad, not when he knew there was all that shit he didn't dare say a word about. 

And now Dad said words about _that_. "Before all this... we didn't know you were so unhappy."

"I wasn't," he said, and knew even as he said it that he talked too fast to sound honest. He switched to working on his left leg, holding on to his toes. "It was a long time ago. I was just being... dramatic and... and stuff. I got over it. I just. For a while there I forgot I got over it."

Dad looked over to the corner, to the mike and the guitar, and looked back and gave him a nod. 

"'s not like I even had a real _reason_."

And if they saw all that why didn't Dad see _that_? Why hadn't he noticed how small and stupid the reason was? He'd told Naegi about it all over again, he remembered that much. The girl he was always eying up at the salon back in Osaka, the one he tried to get all his appointments with not _just_ because she was hot. She wouldn't go out with him, told him all her boyfriends were musicians. So he thought: that's it, I'll be a musician, I'll be the best punk rocker in the world, maybe I won't even have to be a really _good_ musician, they say Sid Vicious was a shit bassist – 

_(and they say Sid Vicious knifed his girlfriend)  
_  
– and then maybe, he'd imagined, I'll get my hands on that dynamite body and her magic fingers'll go somewhere past my head. That was _it_. And the really stupid thing was now looking at it from the ancient age of eighteen he could see that was probably a nice way to brush him off. She was a university student shoring up her tuition and he was like five years younger than her and she probably couldn't straight-out tell a customer to go shove it. 

To fill the silence he got up and got them more neatly-packaged doses of booze. 

***

"'m sorry. I fucked it up, didn't I?"

Once it was all laid out so neat so clean. High school on a scholarship, wowing the crowd at Koshien, picking the sweetest offer from the major leagues, fame and fortune. He didn't know exactly when it had settled this way but he knew it had been settling almost as long as he could remember. Mom hadn't smiled at his quizzes and worksheets covered with red ink but she smiled at the scoreboard every game. After he started playing baseball and being so great at baseball Dad didn't take him aside to say things like you'll have to be grown up and take care of yourself someday, you need to listen to the teacher. They were soothing when he told them he hated school, didn't say anymore that he had to learn to put up with it, that was life. He knew exactly where to go, exactly what to do, the winning formula. Why had he ever thought of that as a burden? Why did he give up on it the moment it stopped being as fun as he was used to? Stupid lazy boy, ungrateful little shit never realized what he brushed off, threw away. 

They'd always loved him, would always love him whether or not he deserved it, even if idiot that he was he hadn't always been sure it was _him_ they loved, but the rest of the world? Who else'd touch him? What team in the world would want someone who'd stabbed a girl in the gut? Who in the world'd want to listen to his warbling whining? And they'd worked so hard and they'd lost everything and that, part of that was his fault too, wasn't it, because if he hadn't been so stupid, if he'd seen what Enoshima was up to some time in that whole peaceful first year, if he'd stopped her – 

"Fucked up... fucked up everything. 'm so sorry. So sorry."

***

It was so warm. Everything so close. He wanted to melt into it, wanted to struggle free of it. Too close. Too close! No. I don't want this. No. No. Stop. Don't do this. I'm begging you. No. And the voice murmuring right in his ear. He jerked away and into something else. No. No. Nonono. Stop it. Please. He went under. In the dark eventually he heard singing. 

***

Sayaka's hands in his. Sayaka's fingers with the nails so neat. Sayaka looking as anxious as he felt. Sayaka saying, this is, this is all pretty new to me, because, well, you know what I mean. 

I know what you mean. 

Is it all right if we take it slowly?

Sure, sure, no problem, I mean, we've got all the time in the world. 

***

There had probably been hangovers worse than this one but none of them were pounding away from inside his skull right this instant as the chimes of the alarm pounded in from the other side. He drew himself halfway out of his curl to pull a pillow over his head and held it there, groaning. As he'd felt for the pillow he thought he felt more than one. The futon under him felt different. No. It wasn't the futon. It was... the alarm was so close... it was the bed, the king-size bed in – in – in – in the bedroom, the one Mom and Dad slept in, what was he doing here? 

"Morning." Mom sounded different from yesterday. Wary, almost. "Are you feeling all right?"

"'m fine," he said into the pillow. His stomach churned. He couldn't figure out which position aggravated it least. "Morning." Shit shit and shit. He must've made an even bigger ass of himself after he got completely blotto last night and he didn't even remember _how_ big an ass.

"I'll leave this here, if you're..." A _clunk_ on the nightstand. "We thought we'd order in this morning. What do you want? I'll get the menu if –"

He tried to figure out the best way to say he'd just throw it up, it'd be a waste of money even if it wasn't _their_ money. Then he remembered he had an explanation that could sidestep all of that, a little more time before he had to cross that bridge. "Thanks, but actually I was gonna meet the others for breakfast. At, um, eight. It's not eight yet, is it?"

"No, you have nearly an hour." She sounded tremendously relieved. How did saying such a little thing relieve her that much? "Be sure and drink plenty of water."

He uncurled himself and drank the glass of water Mom had left on the nightstand. Did the usual morning things. A little before eight Mom answered the door, and when she called "Asahina-chan!" he felt obliged to go over. 

"Morning, Asahina."

"G'd morning." And that was different from yesterday too, quieter, her smile more dutiful, and he was glad and then guilty for his gladness that she wasn't wasting her exuberance on him this morning. "I thought I'd check about the breakfast meeting. I guess you're ready, right?"

"Yeah."

In the elevator Asahina tapped out a rhythm on the brass rail and Leon pulled out some particularly stubborn tangles in his hair. When the elevator opened in the lobby they passed through without seeming to catch any notice. 

Naegi waved them over from the far end of the bustling café where they'd pushed a couple of tables together. When Leon and Asahina took their seats there were still two chairs left empty out of eight. He looked around. Celes and Fukawa weren't there, of course, and neither was Togami. There were seven menus laid out, one for if Togami had shown up; Leon muttered too-ordinary hellos as he picked up his to hide behind and tried to figure what he'd be least likely to throw up. They'd notice if he didn't eat anything. Hagakure started reading off the list of breakfast drinks and his voice pounded away to intensify the throbbing just over Leon's ears. Naegi murmured something, somewhat abashedly, about how the rest of them were still underage. 

"C'mon, Naegi-chi, looks like we could all use a drink, right?"

Leon glanced over the top of the menu and realized that Asahina wasn't close to the only one who wasn't up and at 'em. Naegi and Oowada both looked down. Kirigiri looked neutral. Hagakure looked determinedly cheerful as he kept rattling off mimosas and bellinis. When the waitress came by he recited seven of the drinks, supposedly all for himself, and preemptively brandished his passport. The waitress blinked at him and took everyone else's orders for tea, juice, different kinds of coffee. After she left with the drink orders and before she came back to take meal orders they said things for the sake of saying them that dangled limp in the air once they came out like hey, have you decided what to get, oh, the ham and eggs, okay, sounds pretty good, well I'm getting the – Leon decided on one of the cheapest things on there so there shouldn't be too much to chew through. He was lucky; he didn't have to say all this to anyone, because nobody asked. He held his menu under the table and out of sight as the waitress collected the other six, in case he needed to hide again. 

It wasn't until everyone's drinks and breakfasts were delivered and the waitress left for the third time and Hagakure was starting to push his assortment of cocktails on the rest (Hagakure himself claimed something clearish in a shallow glass, Oowada stared for a while before grabbing something thick and red), that Naegi said, "Do we all know about... yesterday?"

Asahina methodically tore bits off one of the pastries she'd grabbed from the baskets in the center of the table. "I heard. You and Oowada... you got there in time..."

Leon stirred his yogurt, remembering how Enoshima gloated about it. Oogami. She'd managedit without anyone getting there in time. Oogami was the toughest of them, no question, the strongest girl in the world, they said, and stronger than the strongest guy, turned out the only one who could kill her was herself. 

"Asahina-san –"

"It's not _fair_!" Tableware jumped on the white cloth, startled as the rest of them by Asahina's fists slamming the table. "It's not fair! Sakura-chan... she didn't even know. Monobear... Enoshima... made her forget... she never would've agreed if she knew it was already gone. Her father was dead and the dojo was gone and she made her forget! Sakura-chan died and it was for _nothing_!"

Naegi bit his lip. Kirigiri tilted her head downward at the slightest angle; Hagakure lowered it outright. Leon thought: Oogami never would've agreed to _what_? He looked over at Oowada, who soon looked just as mystified. He'd known Oogami killed herself and Asahina tried to get herself voted the culprit but he hadn't known exactly why either of them did that. No, wait, he hadn't known even that – Enoshima had _said_ so, and Enoshima lied all the damn time when she thought it would make you feel worse, though he knew for sure now part of that was true. Before that – he'd seen the things on the two other murder-and-trial DVDs, and he'd heard what they told him about the fake trial with Ikusaba and the final trial after that, and he knew what Alter Ego knew about the time in between, but there were still these gaps. 

What happened? Could he just _ask_? _Hey, Asahina, you really tried to frame yourself after your BFF kicked the bucket? So how'd that happen?_ Or go snoop on the Internet, go over the news stories, look it up at Hope's Peak Perfect Edition? He'd already gone voyeuring reading about Togami and Celes, why stop there? 

"But she gave us a way into the headmaster's office," said Kirigiri after another moment, and her voice was low like it often was but it was also now a little soft around the edges, maybe even hesitant. "And she brought us together so that Junko Enoshima had to forge a murder and break her own rules for the next trial. And that was the beginning of the end."

Asahina didn't seem to hear her. Tremors moved from her shoulders down to her fingers where they clutched the edge of the table. The people at the nearby tables were staring. Leon hoped they didn't understand any more Japanese than he understood Korean. 

The silent stillness broke when Togami swept in past the glass doors and took the seventh chair, leaving the eighth empty between him and Kirigiri. "Glad you could make it," said Naegi as his hand went up to signal the waitress. "Let me just get you a –" Before he could really think about it Leon had reached over and pressed his menu into Naegi's hand. " – oh, thanks," said Naegi, and passed it on to Togami barely missing a beat. Togami opened it up and started to survey it without missing another one. 

Asahina took deep shuddering breaths that twisted something in him to hear and went back to maiming baked goods. Kirigiri said a couple more low soft things to her and looked almost relieved when Asahina waved her off and lied that she was A-okay. Naegi said some halting things about how he hadn't been able to get hold of Togami. Togami read the menu and said some things about staying in a different hotel with his own money. Said something snippy about how it was obvious he was getting shoved into a spare room because why would anyone think he needed or wanted a suite with two bedrooms?

Asahina roused herself to mutter, with a strain of incredulity, "You don't like that you got _too much_?"

"Well, if you ever want to do some entertaining," said Hagakure, trying to look smirky and knowing. Sometimes Leon found it as hard to believe he was twenty-two as he'd once found it hard to believe he was twenty. 

"They probably did give you the nearest vacancy," said Kirigiri. "They're trying to keep us close together, and we know Fukawa-san's family stayed here at one point."

"Oh yeah," said Hagakure, "and she's got a father and a mother and a mother... even with _these_ beds it could get crowded, right?" 

As he made himself lift the spoon Leon remembered Togami's room was on the twenty-sixth floor. He remembered something Mom said, something about how in the beginning they'd _wanted_ to share a floor with Maizono's dad, and with Enoshima and Ikusaba's parents. Enoshima and Ikusaba's parents had still been Enoshima and Ikusaba; if they'd been married they weren't by then, maybe they'd broken up and even if they were okay with being roommates they wanted a room and a bed each...

The conversation had moved on and tripped spectacularly. "Then..." Hagakure was saying, "that means... _that_ room was _those_ people's! They offed themselves in there, and then yesterday, _she_ went and–!" His arm flew out into his most dramatic point. "It's haunted! Cursed! A Suicide Suite! Get out while you still can, Oowada-chi!"

Oowada gave him a long look. People were beginning to stare again. 

Leon managed to say, "It wasn't theirs. Theirs was Togami's room."

"Oh," said Hagakure. "Okay then."

Togami made another little contemptuous noise. 

***

They were at the stage of gradual drift-offs with mutterings of see-you-later. Leon got up and noticed Oowada was still sitting there, his fork poised on an empty plate. He'd finished his red drink and there was another empty glass next to him and one still half full centimeters away from his other hand. For a moment looking at him Leon was scared for no reason he could point at. To chase it away he opened his mouth and said, "Gonna go see Alter Ego. You coming?"

Oowada didn't say anything but when Leon started to turn away he heard the clatter of Oowada putting down the fork. 

They went to the twenty-fourth floor in the same elevator as Kirigiri, in silence, and ended up walking down the hall to 2402 not-quite-together. Kirigiri's grandpa let them all in. Right away Kirigiri started getting ready to head back out. Leon guessed it was more stuff to do with the memories and Alter Ego's data but he didn't ask. 

When Leon woke up the laptop Alter Ego smiled and said, "Good morning! Oh, it's nice to see you again, Oowada-kun!" Oowada looked like he was about to bolt. Eventually after the door closed behind Kirigiri ("See you soon, Kirigiri-san!" Alter Ego called as she passed, and she turned her head long enough to nod) he pulled up a chair next to Leon but stayed tensed near the edge of the seat while Leon typed and Alter Ego talked about the English project, ready to take off at the slightest notice. 

One problem with that plan: when the bell rang and they heard Fujisaki's dad talking to Kirigiri's grandpa in the foyer there was nowhere to take off _to_ except maybe the bathroom – Oowada took a long look at the bathroom door before looking back – and the bedroom was right out. They both knew his voice from when they'd stayed at Fujisaki's place over winter break, and if they hadn't remembered there was old man Kirigiri, really-old-man Kirigiri, saying, "Of course, Fujisaki-san. You should be aware there are some other visitors right now..." He kept talking but the exact words dropped low and out of hearing. Probably something like: the killers that didn't try to kill themselves are in there talking about different kinds of Yankee. 

"Shit," Oowada whispered. His words were pointed away from Leon, into empty air. _Shit!_

"Should I come back later?"

Fujisaki's dad had a voice like Fujisaki's, soft and diffident, only a little bit deeper. He wasn't as small or frail as Fujisaki, Leon remembered, but when they stood side by side he was shorter than Naegi, who was the second-smallest guy in the class, and as slight as Naegi. He'd wondered a couple times what kind of shit Fujisaki's dad had to put up with when _he_ was a kid. Maybe not quite as much, because he had a squarer face and thicker bones and all those things that added up to looking definitely like a guy, just a short one and a freaky-young one – he was one of the youngest dads their class had, to start with, and Fujisaki had said that in restaurants and so on even as young as _he_ looked they kept being mistaken for brother and sister. Maybe Fujisaki would've looked like that, one day. 

"If that's what you'd like," said Kirigiri's grandpa. 

Pause. "No," said Fujisaki's dad. His voice now was like how Fujisaki talked when he squared his shoulders and got ready to show how strong he really was, how brave he really was, you couldn't be brave if you couldn't be scared, "I think I'd like to see him now."

Oowada stood up and turned around but didn't run. Leon got up just as the two men came in from the foyer. "Hi," he said, stupidly, because everything else he could think to say in that moment was even stupider. 

"Good morning, Kuwata-kun." Nobody would ever mistake Fujisaki's dad for Fujisaki's brother now. He was the same size as before, or maybe skinnier, but during all the shit of the last two years, the last three months, everything else about him was catapulted forward in time, to where a guy his age ought to look and then past it, the lines in his skin, the gray in his hair. "... hello." Those words fell a lot heavier out of his mouth; his left hand, hanging at his side, folded tighter. 

"I've got no excuse," said Oowada, and after that whispered _shit!_ he was keeping it together, not a stammer in sight, and in that moment Leon hated him so much he could almost understand the kind of hate Oowada must've had in his head when he swung the dumbbell, _how can_ he _do it, why_ him, _it's not fair, it's not fucking fair_. "I know I've got it coming. Whatever you want me to –"

"Please don't talk to me right now, Oowada-kun." As he walked forward he still spoke so soft. "I don't want anything from you but that –"

"Hello?" Alter Ego piped up over him. "Who is it? ... Papa? Oh, excuse me –" 

In the long seconds before Fujisaki's dad choked out "Chihiro?" Oowada got the hell out of there fast as he could without actually running, circling wide around Fujisaki's dad and then a straight line out the door except for sidestepping Kirigiri's grandpa. In the seconds after the word came out Leon thought the way he'd said it reminded him of something, someone, and wondered what. Then he realized what: Mom, as she ran into the elevator. Only it was worse, way worse, because when she called his name Mom knew for sure he was the same person, or at least the same flesh and bones. Alter Ego was real, too, Alter Ego was a person, but he wasn't _that_ person any more than Leon was Mom or Dad. 

(The third DVD, the What Really Happened: Ishimaru walking to his death, different gait, different set to his shoulders, with wild bright eyes that Leon didn't understand until days later when Celes said _Ishimaru-kun went a little mad_ )

He started trailing after Oowada because he couldn't think what else to do, just wanted to move, do _something_ , but as he went forward left foot right foot with his eyes on the door a hand closed on his wrist. He bit back a yelp, babbling in the inside of his head that he already knew whose hand it was, whose hand it had to be even if he didn't see it right now, if he could just make himself look he'd be doubly sure, it couldn't be anything anyone _bad_ , nothing worth screaming about, it was okay, it was okay, _it was okay_...

"Kuwata-kun? Could you stay for a moment? Please." 

He took another few breaths before he turned his head to Fujisaki's dad and nodded.


	5. Interlude (Mondo Oowada): But now and then we wonder who the real men are

A long while ago they'd confessed to each other that they hadn't had sex once in their lives and then said to each other what, _you've_ never, no fucking way! Kuwata had said, the hell, chicks dig that shit, is it like one of those man's honor things, you gotta get _married_ or something? And Mondo had to explain while even more blood went to his face that he wasn't sure if he'd go that far with a girl because he hadn't gotten close to the kind of situation where he'd have to _decide_. To go with the easy baseball quip that had Kuwata rolling his eyes but laughing, you didn't think about trying for a home run if you couldn't even make it to first base. 

Kuwata, on his part, had no trouble getting girlfriends in general with his cocky grin and his easy moves, but he never got that far with them. Had a knack for going after the ones who wouldn't. It was like when Chuck strained at his leash after cars and bikes; he wouldn'tve known what to do if he caught one. 

***

_She's into some kinky shit_ , Kuwata said, and on the surface it was more of the old swagger, like he was bragging about another of his nonexistent conquests. But even then Mondo saw the empty space in his eyes, and the layers of bruises on his neck, and how loose his old uniform hung. 

***

"Oh-ho!" cried Enoshima. "So we have a martyr on our hands! A penitent! A man's man who would immolate himself on the altar of manly principle, defiant to the end! Such inconsiderate people, martyrs, they don't care what happens to them so of course they never think about the poor wretches they leave behind –" 

"Shut up." He didn't have enough voice anymore to shout it and that bugged him, couldn't help the crazy thought somewhere deep inside that if he could just be loud enough she'd shrug and say, okay, you got me, it's all a dream, you shouldn'tve had so much of the greenhouse moonshine, you can wake up now. 

Last night Kuwata asked if he could bring himself to hit Enoshima, knowing now what he did, what she did. He knew now that he could certainly try. There was no trying now, not with his hands tied to his feet like this, but he'd tried before she laughed and clapped her hands and sent lightning up his spine, and for a while rocking back and forth on the cold floor of the camera room he'd tried to try. 

(And he remembered standing outside the bloody bathroom where Maizono's body lay, saying something like, what kind of shit would do something like that, when we find out who the fucker is I'll give him the goddamn death penalty myself, and he was saying it to Naegi, watching for a flinch. Then big-eyed Naegi, nervous but not any more nervous than before, said something like, um, but what if we find out the killer's a girl?)

Enoshima rambled on about some guy named Lorenzo who was a martyr too, and Nagasaki, and Sadako Sasaki, and how much she hated virgins. If he shut his eyes he could see her coming back from Shibuya yammering all this a mile a minute to her sister, who'd be lugging more than her share of shopping – he could see it up until she said wasn't it sad how Fujisaki died a pathetic virgin killed by a doubly pathetic virgin, and yapped right over him trying again to tell her to shut up. 

He wasn't any kind of martyr of course. The whole thing about martyrs was they were good people. People who didn't deserve it.

Okay, he thought. So maybe I'm gonna die. Okay. 

She fiddled with the camera screens flick-flick-flick. There went Asahina brushing her teeth over the bathroom sink, there went Togami in the library, there went Ishimaru staring at the ceiling, there they all went until it was all Kuwata at different angles. Kuwata lying on the bed with his arms folded under his chin watching the black screen of that big TV. "Now _you_ shut up," she snapped as she grabbed a roll of tape. And when she was done with that she started throwing things into a shopping bag that looked too goddamn new and crisp and all to be a year old. While she did that she said all prim-librarian, "Well now, young man, it looks like you're need of an object demonstrationof how this sort of self-destructive behavior hurts your family and friends, no, wait, just your friends in this case, isn't that right?" and only then he realized the smallest part of what she meant to do.

***

He'd regret it later, like he regretted all the mountains of shit he couldn't take back, but at least these thoughts as terrible as they were weren't so obvious out there and un-take-backable. At least when he thought _What're you doing? Why're you just doing it? What kind of man_ are _you?_ Kuwata didn't see him think it. 

He saw Kuwata lie back on the bed. He saw Enoshima pull down his pants. He saw Kuwata's hands clench and Kuwata's eyes shut and Kuwata's lips press together. 

Forever later he saw Enoshima turn her head and wink up at one of the cameras as she pulled things out of the shopping bag, and not long after that he heard Kuwata start to scream.

***

When he stumbled in and turned on the light Kuwata looked just like he had on the screens. His hands were still tight on the head of the bed while the rest of him lay loose on the blanket like a dropped puppet. Mondo looked hard at Kuwata's hands because the white at his knuckles and the tremors that went through his fingers every few seconds meant he was still alive. Not like Daiya's hands large and callused, open and slack. Not like Fujisaki's tiny hands with his thin fingers curling in toward his palms. 

Kuwata's fingers twitched when Mondo pried them from the headboard. He didn't stir when Mondo tried saying things, fucking useless things like hey and sorry and you hearing me? but he whimpered faintly into the blanket when Mondo touched his shoulder and whimpered again when Mondo started trying to get the pillows out from under his too-skinny ass and thighs. The pillow on top was dotted with drying blood from somewhere Mondo didn't want to think about. When he thought, he thought of taking off the pillowcase. When he started to do that he saw the stain had leaked through to the pillow so he tossed the whole thing under the bed. 

With his clothes off, Kuwata seemed even smaller. Not nearly as small as Fujisaki but for him, way too small. It was even easier to see how close his bones were to his skin. It used to disgust him, hadn't it, how easy Kuwata had it. He was from the kind of rich that didn't think they were rich because they weren't _Togami_ -rich; cash flew from his pockets. His biggest gripe was that his folks got too _excited_ about him, too happy that even if he was a lazy dumbass the major-league teams were shoving each other out of the way waving offers at him as far back as _junior_ fucking high, too glad that even if all _their_ money happened to vaporize he was set for goddamn life. The worst thing that ever happened to him was someone made him cut his hair, and okay, that wasn't _fun_ , but... 

("He's... terribly confident, isn't he?" Fujisaki ventured one day in the cafeteria, early on. And Mondo said something like, yeah, the kind of confident you get when you always get what you want. And Fujisaki, who was speaking up more by then, said something like yes, but he's _nice_ about getting what he wants. And Mondo had to admit Fujisaki was on to something there. Kuwata was full of himself, sure, but it wasn't the same way as Togami, the nose-in-the-air way, it was a smiling friendly way. He was too busy being full of himself to bother being as cruel as the kind of popular boys, the strutting sports stars, that Fujisaki remembered with tears welling up in his eyes. That was one of the things no one would have guessed about how the three of them would click together.)

Kuwata started moving again when Mondo started working the covers out from under him to do some covering – rolled away, rolled into a ball. Mondo leaned in as he pulled the covers back up, heard something, leaned in closer, but Kuwata wasn't talking to him, wasn't really there, from somewhere else muttered _no, no, no_.

"Fuck, I fucked up."

Kuwata kept whispering _no_ , kind of twitching his head side to side,and Mondo knew better than to think it meant anything like _no, you didn't, it's okay_. 

"This shit..." He straightened up. "All this shit... Shit. Fuck." 

After some pacing he paced himself to the shelves full of albums. He stuck his hand in and started fumbling through the cases. Eventually he grabbed one, couldn't say why that one, he remembered Kuwata going on about English music but couldn't remember what he'd said about it. He went to the stereo – Kuwata's stereo, he'd seen it enough times to know that. He pressed the button too many times and when the CD tray popped out, right away it started sliding back in. He caught it in his hand, tried to pull it back. When it wouldn't he almost pulled harder – 

( _fuck's sake haven't you broken enough shit for the rest of a hundred lives, for the cherry on top now you've gotten him assraped gonna fuck up all the stuff he's got left?_ )

– but thought better of it. 

( _for once_ )

He got the CD in on the next try. As the first song started he pulled one of the chairs from the card table up to the side of the bed and sat there, leaning forward, elbows on his knees. He watched Kuwata twitch. He knew enough English to know when the English singer started singing _I'm sorry. I'm sorry_. 

_Sorry_ , though, that was just words. Show, tell. He had to show it. Had to do _something_. Had to make something right, whatever little things he could. He thought this, and he tried to do it. Trying counted as much as it ever had. 

***

Such a fuckup. Such a goddamn fuckup. Fucking piece of shit. 

Daiya in his bloody white coat, whispering sorry for messing up and saving his sorry waste of a life. Fujisaki, tears in his eyes, stammering _What's wrong_? Kuwata screaming into the mattress, begging _stop please stop hurts so bad_ and he'd never found out why Enoshima did it to him that night because Mondo, coward that he was, never said. Ishimaru's watch and then Ishimaru's skull breaking under Yamada's hammer, Ishimaru's eyes and mouth open, not understanding why Yamada would shout that he'd done such an awful unforgivable thing... 

He figured out soon enough that she'd hurt Kuwata no matter what he did or didn't do but he kept trying, because maybe that would keep her from hurting him worse. And for a while he could fool himself that he was doing something. That because he played the martyr for her she didn't make Kuwata bleed that bad again until Celes and those sick bearheaded fucks came along. Because Kuwata still sang along to the stereo, sometimes, and insisted on sharing the bed, and hadn't walked out of himself and not come back. 

... Kuwata again, shrugging, playing it cool. _Cameras've gotten an eyeful a billion times already_. Kuwata pulling away with his hand over his mouth, Kuwata scrambling off the bed and running behind Celes's black sheet to throw up Mondo's come. Kuwata saying _I'm sorry._ Like it was his fault. He'd never said shit like that before, never a sorry when he didn't have to. He'd never been scared of Mondo, either, until then. 

Then after everything was over Kuwata hadn't wanted to go. Scratch that. Hadn't wanted to go with _him_. He knew from the first day down there with Kuwata throwing the cola can that he hated him, had to hate him, for Fujisaki, but it wasn't until then that he started throwing things again, words again, making it so clear again. Making it clear, too, he knew what Mondo had been trying for all those days and weeks and knew it didn't count for shit because Fujisaki was _dead as ever_ , Kuwata yelled, _killed as ever._

And he thought sometimes that if he'd finished things the very first night, stuck a fork in the socket like Celes pointed out... he wouldn't have been able to do those small sorry things he'd done for Kuwata, for Fujisaki and then Ishimaru's ghosts, but he wouldn't have been able to do any more of the large terrible ones either. 

But he couldn't go back and do that. So he kept getting up in the morning, because now that he'd done those things there was nothing for it but to hope he could still put _something_ right again in the time he didn't deserve. 

***

Shiro Fujisaki. A little guy like his son, a nice guy like his son. First met him at the door when Mondo headed to Fujisaki's place over Golden Week to take him riding. Looking him up and down, judging him but not the judgment most people made – _You must be Oowada-kun. How do you do? I'll get Chihiro. Would you like some coffee?_

And what could he ever put right for him?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In translations of the relationship charts in the Reload artbook, Leon speculates that Mondo must be popular with the ladies (which those who've gone through his events know is not the case), and Mondo calls Leon an idiot. Chihiro comments on Leon's self-confidence; Leon's comment on Chihiro, sadly, sounds something like the Japanese equivalent of "make me a sandwich lol."
> 
> A canon cherry, picked from SDR2: In a free time event, Nidai mentions training a baseball player who was already getting offers in middle school. I figure that's more likely to be Leon than some other super-prodigy who for some reason didn't get tapped for Hope's Peak.
> 
> "some guy named Lorenzo": Reference to Ryuunosuke Akutagawa's story "The Martyr." Lorenzo is an orphan brought up by Christian monks in Nagasaki, who is accused of fathering a child out of wedlock and finally absolved when it's revealed to be, shall we say, physically impossible.
> 
> Sadako Sasaki: Perhaps better known as the Sadako of the thousand paper cranes.

**Author's Note:**

> Shameless lyrics appropriation notes so far:
> 
> -"I Just Can't Be Happy Today," The Damned  
> -"Machine Gun Etiquette," The Damned  
> -"Bohemian Rhapsody," Queen  
> -"The Crane Wife 1 and 2," The Decemberists  
> -"The Kids Aren't Alright," The Offspring  
> -"Real Men," Joe Jackson  
> -"Sigh No More," Mumford and Sons


End file.
